Following the Peacock

There are days when the work flows, when we sit down at the computer and are amazed that the words come through us like a rushing river, carrying us ever deeper into the story, into the lives and the world of our characters.

Then there are the other days.

What brings us to the page on those days when the river is a trickle, when we have to pick our way over the rocks and hard places that are damp with water, the flow that once carried us serving now only to trip us up?

There are the pedestrian reasons of course: to meet a deadline, to keep our word, to finish our pages, to prove to ourselves that we are truly writers and not frauds. All these are real reasons, and valid. But I think there is more to it.

I think we come back even on the hard days, especially on the hard days, because we are searching for a glimpse of excitement in the book we love, for a glimpse of beauty. The peacock that has gotten annoyed with us, or who has chosen to hide himself under a bush somewhere. Sometimes that beauty is hard to find again, and that is where our faith and discipline come in. So we move one word, one sentence at a time, as slowly as we must, into the novel we love, knowing that peacock will show himself again when he is good and ready.