I seem to be suffering from a case of the "blahs".

My writing has stagnated horribly - tragically - and I have no clue how to kickstart it. (Yes I do - I just need to write though this, but I keep doing stupid crap like cleaning out my son's closet and laundry instead.) Here's the thing, I'm deep into one writing project, the YA urban fantasy, and just starting another, the memoir about my aviation years in AK. I write different things at the same time all the time so that is not a problem, and only the YA book really needs to follow a plot - the AK book is kind of a group of related essays and it's hard to be confused about what you're writing when you're writing about your life. (It's not like I don't know what happened next.)

But I'm so freaking stuck.

Okay - not stuck. That's a bad word choice - that suggests writer's block and I'm not blocked. The YA book is totally plotted and I'm over 30,000 words into it. I know all the elements, all the good guys and bad, where the lost stuff is hidden, where the clues are hidden, where the climactic scene is going to occur, and what the chick hero has to do.

It's exciting but not all action and there's some cool history (all of which is true) and some cool religious and political overtones (cause I'm all about the politics and religion) and THERE IS NO REASON ON GOD's GREEN EARTH FOR ME NOT TO BE RIPPING THROUGH THIS BOOK!

But I've got the blahs, and as excited as I am about this story, I'm just not excited about writing anything.

Or even really reading anything which is even creepier somehow.

It might be that this is the "extra" book - my agent wants me on all things AK and I am getting on all things AK but it's not like anyone is buying the AK flying book which makes me wonder if my dear agent and I are just insane for even liking that book let alone the one that is unwritten. So why not keep going on the YA book even though no one has asked me for one and it might sit in a drawer forever.

I swear I need a gold star or something; I feel like I'm in the 3rd grade again.

And maybe it's that writing about AK is hard. Everyone else has moved on. We went from being an incredibly tight group of people to ones who only exchange Christmas cards and even that might be over. There might be no Christmas cards from anyone I knew in Alaska this year; they are all flying other planes, living other lives, long long gone from who we were just a few years ago.

They have all left Alaska literally and completely and I'm going back there again in my head to write more about then, instead of living in now. And I miss them all but I don't think they miss me - or rather, I don't think they miss that time and place as much as I seem to.

I'm sure my agent had no idea that asking me to write about this would put me into some sort of writer's mini meltdown.

The YA urban fantasy is about a girl who's father has died, and that is me. The AK memoir is about a girl who worked in a place where a lot of guys she knew crashed and died, and that is me too. But what's weird is that none of that is hard for me to write about - it's just what was and how it is and who I knew. I can write about the dying. But how we all live now - who we miss now - maybe that is what is making this so tough. Probably the best thing I could do is write about how everything changed after Alaska simply because I wasn't there anymore - how everything got harder even after life got easier without that crazy job to wear me down. And the YA book is really not about the dragons and the mystery and the danger but about a girl choosing to live, even when it means she has to be a little bit sad forever for who she lost.

I have to write my way out of this blahness because that's the only way to move on from either place I'm in. But it's so much easier just to clean those closets sometimes. Easier to put things where they belong when they are right there in front of you, rather than go trolling around in your head looking for answers to all those complications life throws your way.

Sometimes I really wish I could be all about the easy and I don't honestly know why I can't; I don't know why these words matter to me so much that even as I resist writing them, I still struggle to get them down.