It Lives!

D: Picture it, if you will – a bent figure emerges from a nest of blankets and coffee cups. It stumbles. Its legs are weak and it is nearly overcome by the debris that surrounds it.

It is A.

She went into the weekend an uncertain warrior, and has emerged. . .

Victorious!

5 signs you’ve taken writerly hibernation too far:

1. You’ve been sitting at your desk so long, the cats start to think of it as sacred space, and start sacrificing their mouse-toys to your benevolence.

2. The furnace dies, lights start winking out throughout the house and you’re pretty sure it may be the end of days in glacier form outside your door, but damn, this is a good bit and you just can’t stop now.

3. You shun email and any other form of communication for so long that you’re thinking a ‘scorched earth’ policy might not be so bad – that can work in cyberspace, right? Right?!

4. You realize it’s a good thing you made a casserole or two before you closed the door on human interaction, otherwise your child might have been SOL when it came to dinner.

D: True story. TC came wandering by at some hour past dark declaring himself hungry. His mother’s reaction (which, remarkably was not to tell him to invade turkey)? Mumbling something resembling: Yeah, food. Just a sec. Five hours later he’s had dinner, desert and whatever else he could rustle up in the fridge, and A is still buried beneath her blankets clacking away at the laptop.

A: I was at a good part.

D: The beauty of this list is that the entire weekend was a ‘good part.’

A: I know. I’m excited.

D: Aside from the fact that I think you killed me –

A: Oi! Spoilers, Druid. And I did not. I’m still editing that bit.

5. A song that is not harmonious with the predominantly soundtrack-like playlist you’ve developed for your writing somehow pops up. Under normal circumstances, you love this song. However, during witerly hibernation, your reaction is to break into tears because you were so close, and jab at the iPod until something far more pleasing appears.

D:This may be accompanied by muttering and swearing, and it may cause your child to raise his eyebrows and back slowly out of the room.

A: He did not – only when he started singing along with one of the songs, which may or may not have induced me to snarl at him, was there any attempt to tiptoe around the writer.

D: And then someone accused you of listening to a dirge.

A: Well, it was a bit intense.

D: A bit?

A: Okay, so OD-ing on The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug soundtrack, and Florence + The Machines for three days straight may have been overkill (if you aren’t me and you don’t have a penchant for dirge-like music to begin with).

D: And then you went and added the Henry V soundtrack to the mix.

A: At least I left Braveheart out.

D: Thank the gods for small mercies – I’m not sure smearing yourself with woad and shouting “Freedom” would be all that conducive to your efforts.

A: Actually…

D: That’s an experiment for a different list, A.

A: Killjoy.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to listen to Thorin wax deeply lyrical about misty mountains cold and figure out just which Irish ‘otherworld’ D has managed to lose himself in! Good night, folks and thank you so much for reading!