A Merry Christmas to All!!!!! (Patricia Potter)

I love this opportunity to wish you all a very happy Christmas.

And say a huge thank you to all of you who have joined us in this community. We’ve enjoyed your input and comments and company and hope you will stick with us next year. You have enriched our lives and we hope we’ve given a little back.

I loved Maggie’s post earlier in the week. The one about gifting yourself and feeling good about it. I think we all need to do that. We need to take care of ourselves in order to take care of others. January 1st is my birthday, and I’ve always taken great glee in treating myself during that week between the old and new.

This year, though, I’ve already received the greatest gift. The groove is back. The love of writing has returned.

Last year was not one of my best. I’d never had writers’ block until then. In fact, I didn’t even believe in it. You can just write through it, I mumbled when people talked about the affliction. Forty books. Fifty. They just kept coming on strong.

And then . . . nothing.

I discovered last year that writer’s block is really quite real. I had to force myself to go up to my office, sit down at the computer and try to type out something that made sense. I kept writing myself into corners. I’ve done that before, but I was always able to leap over the problem. This time I couldn’t. Nothing worked. The characters didn’t talk to me like they usually do. Every word was agony.

It had never happened before and it terrified me. The more I tried to write, the harder it came. Any excuse would send me fleeing from the computer.

Part of the reason, I think, is my mother who is in a nursing home. She had some bad weeks, even months, last year when I thought we would lose her. I went over every day, urging her to eat, trying not to hear her cries to let her die. I became an emotional zombie, and I discovered that you can’t write when you’ve been drained of all the emotions that usually enrich a book.

Instead of the two books I usually write each year, I could only write one, and that, I felt, was certainly not one of my best. I might be surprised. I hope I am, and oddly enough the books I’m most dissatisfied with are usually the ones that people like the best.

But it finally got done. It wasn’t a pretty process. Fits and starts. Long, long nights toward the end. Wishing for more time to fix but realizing it was already way beyond deadline time.

The gift, I felt certain, had left me. Gone to some more appreciative soul.

And then I started the new book. Because it’s the second of a two book contract, and the other was late, I had a dreadful feeling in the pit of my stomach. But something miraculous happened.

The groove returned.

For the first time in a year, I love writing. I can’t wait to get to the computer. The story is flowing, and the characters are talking so fast it’s hard to keep up with them. Writing is not only fun, it’s glorious!

Perhaps it’s because my mother is better. She will be 98 in February and is feeling better, and even reading again. I’m always in search of a good big print book because only then is she content.

So I’ve already received the most priceless gifts I could ever want, and this holiday I hope YOU will indulge yourself. I hope your dearest wishes come true.

So enjoy the holiday. Don't sweat the small stuff. Revel in the season and being alive.

Next year WILL be good. Believe and it will happen.