There are few things that would stand as an adversary to a writer as the enemy known as writer’s block.  The towering wall of inability to muster words to advance ones story.  The sheer frustration of being caught between two opinions, to find oneself standing in the proverbial desert looking across dunes of words that all look the same.  Directionless in your journey.  Observing nothing, but sand that silently echoes over more sand.  Nothing.

dunesBut then you move. Lumbering, walking forward looking for any sign of direction, any hope that might advance you in your prose.  It is then that you realize that war that rages within you.  A war to produce meaningful prose.  A war to combat fatigue, and procrastination.  To move ever forward in a relentless march towards your goal.

Never stopping, plodding along basking in swelter as your head pounds refusing to be quieted by all the Tylenol in existence.

You are dueling the fates.

Wrestling with the Darth Mauls that every writer who wields a pen or PC must contend.  Lost in the silent battle that is as ferocious as the sword saber slashing of any Jedi.

You — are dueling the fates.

Steadfastly you pound the keys swiping at any mirage that would serve as beacon towards your goal.

It is then that you discover and draw power and inspiration: you smash through the door and vault across the borders of silent muse.  To land steadfast ready to run towards the sanctuary of an oasis of prose.

You bask in the stream of consciousness that invigorates you and from which you draw strength. You savor every succulent syllabic strung sentence that smoothly rolls from off your pen.   Your muse has awakened.  Yet you are not fooled.  Although an oasis has found you but for a moment.  You look over the horizon of desert that you must still cross.  A desert that at whose end will yield to you a promised land of a first draft.

You are a writer–and you are dueling the fates.

D