Towers and Castles of the medieval era served not simply as homes, but also places of protection, that place to which rulers, those of their court, and the soldiers guarding them retreated and from which they waged battle.
The Tower provided a place from which the sentry or guardsmen could look out and view those coming to do battle or offend–those who sought to defeat the monarch and occupy her or his home.
Each time we set out to write a story or novel, we wage a war.
That war consists of 2 major battles.
One occurs with our external pressures, the responsibilities of daily lives that seek to tear us from our writing.
Time is a writer’s greatest and most valuable commodity. And yet so many things and people in our lives require and ask for snippets of our time.
The broken faucet, the car whose tires need replacing, that dental appointment, our child’s parent teacher conference, the garden that needs weeding, our job that pays the rent or mortgage.
Even for established writers with a string of publications, family emergencies, and similar requirements of life pull on them as well as the deadlines they must meet in an effort to honor the publishing contracts into which they have entered and that practically speaking, also pay the bills, never mind the book tours and radio interviews they must make as part of promotion and marketing.
This battle with the externals are a never ending. And then there is the second battle, that which we fight on the internal plane, the one where the demons of fear and doubt dwell and reign.
This is the place we face each day once in front of the computer.
The plumber has left. The kitchen sink pipes are clear. And as we stare the computer screen the words refuse to come.
We despair against the quiet knowing that in less than 3 hours the children will have returned home, our spouse will have arrived.
And night having descended will not have delivered any more than the present if we don’t start writing.
Just as each chess player, when their turn arrives, must move one of their pieces during so to the writer must rise each day and make and effort.
Our move is to write. Our turn comes with each day that arrives.
We greet it with not so much our words, but the determination, if not willingness, or perhaps the sheer compulsion or fear that if we do not write, we never will.
To begin is to do. And from typing that first word, the universe sends energies that keep our fingers moving.
What grace.
What a blessing.
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