Creativity Visits...

at the strangest times.

I must confess that I'm running on fumes right now. We've been passing sickness back and forth for quite a while in our little family. D. is on antibiotics for sinusitis, and has also come down with laryngitis (usually my m.o.). He's had a nagging cough for a couple of months.

I've battled the cough now for about three weeks, and it's taken a turn toward my chest. My throat is killing me, and over the weekend it's all gone to my right ear (as it so often does). I'm pretty sure I have an ear infection, and am heading to the doctor tomorrow.

Thankfully the sweet girl is A-OK. Though of course that means her energy level for school is a lot higher than mine at the moment!

It's incredibly cold and pouring snow.

I face a mountain of work before end of semester. I was a little behind before we left for Thanksgiving, became a lot behind before we got home, and spent most of last week dragging energy-wise (as I fought the worsening of this sickness) so have only made a small dent in the piles of reading and grading I need to do, even after several hours of plugging away over the weekend and this evening.

And in the midst of all this...what do I want to do? Write a story.

I do think that stories visit at the strangest times. This has often been the case for me in recent years, that I get ideas for a new story, or an urge to revisit an old, unfinished one, right at a time when I simply have no energy to give to it.

This is a revisit. I've been falling asleep imagining scenes from this particular story, which I began writing over a year ago. It involves four princesses, seven princes (excessive I know) and a lot of interesting political intrigue. It has some moments of romance and humor and a lot of sister time.

A couple of weeks ago, I actually found myself penning new scenes. Only a couple, scribbled in a sprawling hand late at night when I needed to be working, but they were enough to jump start my brain. These characters keep knocking at the door, inviting themselves in, sitting down for a cup of tea. I keep telling them I'm really too busy right now but they won't listen.

I need to be writing my yearly advent poem, and yes, scraps of a possible poem have started coming, but my late night mind keeps going to these characters and this story. And it's getting hard to ignore, despite my exhaustion levels.

A very funny moment has come more than once, very late at night, when I'm up and still on the computer (like now) trying to wind down after working. I find myself wanting to google the characters' names...like I think the story already exists somewhere besides my mind and a few scraps of scattered paper...as though I could find out what happens next by looking them up online.

Creativity...what a mysterious process.