Imagine your a novelist.

You have carried around a story in your head for almost an entire decade, but have been unable to write it. There have been several attempts, rewrites, false starts, and even one successful but aborted attempt. Life interrupts throughout all of this, making any attempt to sit down and get the damn thing onto parchment impossible.

You know the story covers about a year of time, encompassing four seasons in a familiar but alternate landscape. You want to see your story as short series of graphic novels -- four to match the number of seasons. You know that the seasons probably won't divide easily, but that's not your reason for selecting the length: Four books just feels right. 

And then you sit down and start running numbers. The first three books will be some 120 - 150 pages, so you agree on an average of about 137. The last book will be longer, almost 200. You decide to be ambitious and say 199. Okay, so you add it up: 137 * 3 + 199 = 610 pages.

610 pages.

Before you let the implication of that number set in, you decide to subdivide each book. A chapter runs about 23 to 27 pages. 25 on average. Divide. Average. You arrive at an estimate of 24 chapters.

610 pages. 24 chapters. 

24 stories. "Make bigger stories from several smaller ones," you recall from A Drifting Life. Use the smaller stories to resonate or explore the larger arcs. You look are your setting. Your characters. Subdivide. Take those subdivisions and explore them. Follow the characters as you look at that avenue. Is it interesting? How does this reflect on the overall theme?

Stop! Wait! you think, You can't possibly build a story like this! 

Or can you?

It's curious being alone in another country. You find you have surprisingly little distraction available to you. The television is full of barely comprehensible programs in a language you cannot parse. Those you know back home are now several timezones offset from yourself. You may even be terrified to step outside of the hotel for fear of being seen as strange, or worse, that you may become lost completely with no one to help you.

I had one goal today: sleep until the reading from the clock matched my internal sense of time. I've only been partially successful as it feels to be 8pm rather than the 11 displayed on my laptop screen. This apparent laziness is actually sound business sense; a well rested consultant is a productive one, productive consultants result in happier clients. Give a little, get back a lot.

Granted that I don't encounter a bout of insomnia later this evening, I feel I would be ready for work tomorrow morning. That may be delayed, of course, by the arrival of my coworker just before noon tomorrow. Now I have to decide if I am going to go in myself, or wait. If I go in myself, I'm unsure of how useful I'll be. Not knowing the language, as well as not being on the assignment for months may make me more cumbersome to the client rather than useful.

Meanwhile, I cannot seem to put the thought out of my mind that I should be doing something while waiting. Should I write? Draw? Bury myself in my hasty study of the German language? The latter seems the most accessible right now. Even if I manage to memorize one or two words, I'd make progress. What of writing or drawing?

I've been thinking about my skill as a writer and artist, and how that relates to the projects I want to attempt. Am I really at a skill level where I can attempt to tell these stories, and have them turn out the way I want? When I was younger, I thought I had a lot of skill and talent, today however, I see so many faults and inexperience in my previous efforts. My disdain of even basic grammar, the poor proportions, and the stilted dialog. As I began to realize how much I had to learn, I became more and more hesitant to produce anything subject to such criticism. My hectic work and private life provided ample excuse.

In that time, I've tried to make myself into a better writer. I've taken to reading not just for the sheer pleasure of it, but as an opportunity to improve my skills. Many a professional will say that a good writer must be a voracious reader first. While I've taken that advice to heart, I've been less successful at taking the second piece of advice most often given by professionals. You must write a lot.

My output the last year has been practically nonexistent. I could chide myself for this, but there doesn't seem to be a point. Further to the point I needed to set my own writing aside for a while so as to gain a more mature perspective. With that in mind, I now need to make the effort to write more often.

The hardest part is overcoming the unpleasant sensation of disuse. Like a rusty wheel, the words refuse to spin upon the axle smoothly, and only do so under protest with loud squeaking.

You might have noticed that I've been writing a bit more often the last week. Granted, they haven't been the highest quality entries, but there is a purpose behind them. While I've been trying to determine the cause of my creative doldrums, the simple fact is that I'm not writing, drawing, or coding things I enjoy. The obvious solution then, is to write, draw, and code more.

It's hard not for me to reread that line and think, It' can't be that simple. Surely, I need to determine the cause and effect a solution before I can approximate such a result! That indeed might be the case if I were working on an engineering project or rearchitecting an IT infrastructure. This isn't about science, and this isn't about logic. This is about creativity. And like anyone with a creative drive, I've hit a rough patch.

Unfortunately, it's been easier for me as of late to stand still in that patch.Often I'd return to my apartment (or hotel room) at the end of a work day and busy myself with Google Reader and StumbleUpon. This may go on for up to three hours until it's time for my workout. An hour and a half later, it's about time for bed. If only one of those three wasted hours could be reclaimed...

Outside of writing software, I'm not terribly well disciplined in using my time for writing or drawing. I've often waited until a particular sentence, phrase, or mental image struck me before moving to action. Only then would I set my fingers to the keyboard, or my stylus to my graphics tablet. Working in this fashion, you end up creating a mythical figure, your muse. Your belief in your muse also endows her with the conviction only she can provide the best inspiration and the best ideas. Anything done without her say-so would be a flat and sterile abortion of wasted effort.

The thing is, the muse is entirely in your head. In the end, you're still putting fingers to the keyboard and the stylus to the tablet. All else is ceremony.

As a result, I've decided to try something different. Starting with this entry, I am going to dedicate one hour each day to doing something of a creative nature. There are no projects to complete or great works to attempt. It would be a hour, each day, I'd write or draw something.

I had an unusually dream intensive night. This happens to me occasionally, when I'm on progesterone and I'm fortunate enough to have a proper night's rest. The downside, of course, is that I typically only have nightmares.

This time I was lucky. While several threatened to become nightmares, none of them reached that point, save for one. The dream itself was verging on being frightening, a state that I can often recognize in the dream and force myself awake. I tried to force my eyes open, I chanted to myself, "Wake up. Wake up!" Usually this has results within minutes.

My technique didn't work this time. I couldn't make myself wake up. This was actually more terrifying than the dream itself. A total, complete loss of control. The dream itself wasn't enough to wake me, and my own lucid self wasn't enough to force myself awake. Is something wrong with me? my dream-self asked. Am I in a coma? Why can't I wake up? I was growing desperate, the nightmarish imagery that drove me to this point temporarily forgotten.

Eventually I did manage to succeed. My dream self felt so small, a diminutive woman pushing open an enormous eyelid with her both feet and both hands. I remember thinking, It's so heavy! Why can't I open them easily? I caught a fleeting glimpse of my darkened bedroom before I lost my footing and the lid snapped shut once more. After several attempts, I managed to pry them open fully, and re-assume my fleshy host. 

Thinking about it now, I must have been in a deep REM state. I only managed to barely rouse myself despite all my force of will. I must have fallen asleep again shortly thereafter, because a new dream began.

My character and four of my character's friends were somehow thust into the Shadow Realm. One of five realms in this universe. This realm featured twisted inhabitants and the most delicious neo-gothic-architecture-on-LCD. There were few people around save for us. Everything spoke of neglect and decay, and soon we found out why.

The Darklings, appropriately named, are amorphus entities with the texture of living cloth bordering on the shape-shifting. It could float and ripple in heavy air, but it could move and stretch itself like something made of the thickest oil. They would use this contradicting aspects of their being to form weightless bodies and menacing appendages. The denizen's of the Shadow Realm were skiddish with reason: The Darklings attacked anything that wasn't them.

Up until this point we had been trapped in a maze like apartment complex. When we finally saw the shimmering, bronze dusk, we found it filled with Darklings. We ran. We were separated. Each of us were chased down and cornered. Yet, we all somehow survived. Each of us somehow managed to find ourselves back in the original room in which we appeared. Taking a dusty, spider-infested stairwell, we ran toward a clearing where we believed we would find a portal back to our world. I was the last to make it to the stairs, and saw the fluttering, solid and liquid form of a darkling making its way up the staircase.

I cried out to warn the others. Perhaps they ran faster, perhaps they didn't hear me. For reasons I didn't know, the Darkling did not notice me. I bounded up the stairs and found myself outside, on the roof like-ledge of the building. Hundreds of feet below me was black earth, the concrete wall of the opposite building, my four friends, and a shimmering pool of light. 

I knew the portal was the way out, but something felt wrong about it. The light coming from the event horizon was a frigid blue. One of my friends reached the portal and dove in. I jumped from the concrete ledge of the building and watched as the ground drew close to me. Oddly, I landed on my feet without injury. As I ran toward the portal, the Darkling appeared. I watched as my three remaining friends fought and ran against the thing's many ink-like tentacles. It grouped them together, and with a metallic sound it took the form of a sword plunging into it's black body, leaving no sound nor trace of my friends. 

I ran toward the portal, attempting escape, but the light had faded. There was nothing there but concrete and cold earth. The Darkling has disappeared. I thought if I waited the portal would recharge, but nothing happened. I noticed an inset panel in the stone wall and tore it away. I found pipes and a inner brick wall dusted with frost. The surface of the inner brick wall was icy cold. I found a set of small bricks and pressed them in, hoping to find an exit from this nightmarish world.

The two small bricks moved and dropped away with a snap. Behind them were two differently colored eyes on a worn and pallid face. My character must have recognized these eyes as belonging to the Ice King, but my inner snark made a comment about Santa Claus. I must have been waking up.

The Ice King confirmed my fear, this wasn't the portal to my world. My friend was safe in his care, although he had nearly froze to death before they had discovered him. I begged to go with him, anywhere from this world. He told me, with a certain fear in his eyes, that I couldn't. I had been infested by a piece of the Darkling that had killed my other three friends, and I could not leave this world. 

As I woke, the imagery of the Ice King, the sound of his horse and tired voice became fluid. The particulars of the dialog were changed and shifted as my internal editor began to wake. And finally, it was just a dream.

The clock on my deskphone blinks a solemn "11:20 AM", reminding me I only have 40 minutes of my lunch hour remaining. Lunch itself was devoured in less that time, while I depleted the contents of my feed-reader and scanned a few websites. The typical course of the day is for me to go back to work at this point, saving any pursuits of my non-working life for off hours when I'm well away from my desk.

It seems, however, that less and less happens while I'm away from my desk. Work has taken over my life, my demanding work-out regimen feasting on the remains. As a result, I barely have the time to relax let alone be creative. It becomes more and more difficult to ignore the creeping thought that I should simply give up creative pursuits. The weary mantra of "There's no time nor energy for anything else" seems a sad stereotype. "Occasionally, I find the time," I begin, squaking some lackluster justification to complete the sutra. Perhaps it's true that I'm simply not at the point in my life where I can sustain anything else.

You'd think that giving up would provide me with comfort. "Give yourself a break," "Take some time off," "It'll come back." My friends do try to help, but taking their advice to heart only seems to make me feel more and more confined. I can't escape the demands of my life, I can't walk through the immaculate gate in my mind that leads to imagined people and realities. I seem forever chained in the present, free only to catch glimpses through the doorway before it's slammed shut once more.

When writing software, I can fly. I can speed through intricate, ever-changing machines in a infinite field of electric blue.
When writing stories, I'm an invisible telepathic. I can listen in on conversations and peer into secret dreams.
When drawing, I don't exist at all. The world consists only of shape, stroke, and motion. Color is solitary expression.

I'm tired of being chained. I'm even more tired of being aware I am chained.

For all my artful descriptions, there doesn't seem to be any easy solutions. There seems even less a simple explanation for my state.  Maybe there aren't any, maybe the only thing to do is shrug off the weight and sound of clanking metal, reach for the doorknob and turn...