Everything inside me is quiet. There’s plenty to do, and I’m busy doing all of it, but inside…stillness. It’s a very strange thing to be feeling as I dash about, throwing myself into one creative project after another. This silence is probably the reason that I’m not writing, not for my blog and not for my novel, and it’s especially odd because even though I’m not writing I am thinking about writing almost constantly. I stir fragrance into a lovely peach-colored candle and think, What will Cassie find in Puzzlewood? And what is Jeremy going to do when he finds out she’s going to stay at Oxford for the rest of the term? I rip up brightly colored papers, test ink colors, and make tape transfers for Carmen’s art tag exchange and wonder if I have anything to say, anything at all, to the universe at large. I am still researching the 1,001 details and ideas that will flesh out my novel just as frantically as if I needed to know those things right now because I am writing about them right now. I pop over to my WordPress umpteen times daily to browse through old photos and stare at the blank screen, trying to spark words into being. And at night, I tell myself stories until I fall asleep, spinning out other worlds and other lives in endless variations, trying ideas on for size and then discarding them into the void because none of them seem quite right. And I wonder where in the world this sudden silence has come from–only a week and a half ago I was writing so much that I was doing little else. Is it the weight of winter’s cold and colorless oppression? (Which I thought I was avoiding pretty well this year) The problems in my extended family filtering through the lens of my heart? Or perhaps I am too distracted by…what? I wish I knew. But hopefully, somewhere within the stillness I don’t understand, something is germinating, and I will wake up one morning and discover that my words are blooming once more. Until then, if I am not around much, don’t worry–I am fine, I promise…just hibernating in my cocoon, waiting for spring to find me and unfold me into the light.