I had a pretty good writing day yesterday. After a dozen or so attempts, I had finally worked my way through a scene that had been a morass.

I felt suddenly clear, not angry, nothing like that. I was in the moment. I only had to fill it. “You remember when we were on the dock?”

I made significant headway after that, another 15 pages, rocketing through it all. Everything was making sense. I had found my way. I knew the next day would be easy, more of the same, clear sailing until the end.  I was on auto-pilot. And then I ran into this:

I accepted his sudden blindness for nothing but his need of this. I knew there was nothing else to it, holding my hair back and kissing his neck, my practiced breath, my shoulders forward, and had a feeling of being held there and then all of me sloping down through me…

There was more of this, a lot more. It was a wall of awful. I stared. That was all I could do. I had gotten cocky. I had screwed up. I had thought I had it, when I had nothing.

I sat and stared. My mind was blank. I was beaten. I started to write and stopped again. I got through maybe a sentence and stopped again, until finally I had insect momentum and went at it again. I clawed through maybe a page, and then did another, went backward, went ahead and then maybe three more.

I used to dream about flying, almost every night. And then I bragged about it. “I fly every night.” It ended there. I’ve flown maybe twice since then, over 15 years ago. What an idiot. I must be patient. I believe that I’ll have it back tomorrow. I’m building back. I just have to think about yesterday and remember that I can fly…if I want it.