Shaking Off the Writing Shakes

Occasionally, when where to turn and what to do next seem impossible to comprehend, and the light bulb that has been lighting your way through the book you're laboring over suddenly burns out, you feel the shakes start. Going somewhere, curling up in a fetal position, tempts, as does ripping off your clothes racing down the street screaming at the top of your lungs. Looking at the options, some of them as drastic as radical surgery on parts of your anatomy you can't imagine life without, will take a far braver person than you - at least at the moment.

Hitting that snag brings up that age old philosophical question. Why? Why torment yourself like this? Why continue to subject yourself to the terror that awaits in the dark crevices and alleys when you make a wrong turn and end up boxed into a dead end and all paths of graceful or safe retreat appear to be blocked off as well? Then comes the age old philosophical answer. Why not?

One way or another you will solve this dilemma, and it will be what lies in the solution you chose or that is chosen for you (by your characters or your muse) that the real story will come forth. It might not be the one you were laboring over. Hard as it might be to accept, that labor of love might only have been the back story for the one that is to emerge. Regardless, when you unfurl your body, put your clothes back on, and return to your pen, shake though you may, the light will have returned. Only this time it might be natural, not artificial light, and the chances of it burning out will be almost nil.