After much thought, I have decided to start paying attention to my blog again.  By “much thought” I mean that as I was sitting at my desk in my office today, truly sipping my coffee for once since I had already burned my tongue twice, I thought, Hmm, a writer should actually be accused of writing something at some point.  Considering myself on indefinite hiatus from the paid blogging in which I’d been dabbling, it took me all of ten seconds to decide to dust off the old WordPress blog. It took 2 minutes of my lunch break to reset my forgotten password, and then it was just a matter of getting through the day and my commute home. Images of myself curled up on the couch with my laptop, my creativity, and a cup of tea kept poking me no matter how hard I tried to concentrate on site analytics.

Okay, so that’s not a lot of thought at all.  What I have been thinking a lot about lately is the fact that I haven’t produced anything.  At least nothing more than a few scribbles on an errant napkin (which I inevitably lose), or a few chicken scratch notes in the ol’ moleskine that don’t mean squat anymore. Seriously, what in the hell did I mean when I scribbled “couple fight, car, end of”?  I have no idea, but the list of Motown songs to add to my iTunes library on the opposite page reminds me that I still don’t have Jackie Wilson’s “(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher” on my iPod.

I can blame procrastination for the state of my playlist, but believe it or not, procrastination is not to blame for my inability to produce fresh, engaging works of written art.

Quite simply, my outlook on life has changed.   Did you know it’s a lot easier to write dark fiction when you’re miserable and every other text, tweet, or status update you post includes an “FML”?  Crawling out of bed every morning might be a herculean feat, but writing a short story about blood, sweat, and misery? Piece of cake.

I’m not unhappy that my life isn’t unhappy. There is a limit to even my complaining, and I really did always hope I’d end up happy.  But where does that leave my writing? I still love dark fiction.  It’s still what I prefer to read. The genre is constantly evolving.  Which monster is hot this week?  Which fairy tale do we want to retell this month? Wait…vampires are out now? You get the picture. Keeping up with reading dark fiction is a bloody good time for me. And so, I feel the need to press on with writing it.

But it’s different now.  I’m sickeningly in love with my husband.  I enjoy my paid gig.  And speaking of paid, my bills are.  I live near the beach…and I just can’t be sad on the beach. The point is that I kind of feel bad for killing off the cute girl in the opening scene now that I know life doesn’t inevitably suck in the end anyway. It still might suck, but it doesn’t have to.

So, it’s time to expand my horizons.  There are some new scribbles in the moleskine that I have to get into a more legible format before I forget what “feathers in the breeze” means.

And, of course, I’m here to blog again.