A spider ate my brain

      Been in a funk. Had the wind kicked out of me, both personally and writerly, and so I considered ending the blog and walking away from writing in general. Fortunately, a friend of mine gave me World of Warcraft, and I've been busy killing things ever since. And being killed by things, too. Particularly spiders.
      I am not a particularly good player. In fact, I am a spectacularly bad player. I've been killed by: young nightsabers, thistle boars, webspinner spiders, sprites, fell off the island -- twice, rabid thistle boars, sabers, giant spiders, harpies, owls, car salesmen, IRS agents, giant crabs, water lizards, a splendid variety of the undead, and so on and so on. In fact, the creatures of WoW consider me a delicacy. Nightstalkers and spiders will go out of their way to have a bite of delicious me. I am finger -- uh, claw, digit or tentacle lickin' good.
      I've spent a lot of my time as a spirit soaring around looking for my body. (WoWers understand this. If you're not one, just take it on faith.) In fact, after having died five times in a row, I soared around the island just looking at things because it was more fun than playing. (My friend Roen rescued me. She plays a terribly powerful character who is the equivalent of a nuke. But alas, she has a group of terribly powerful characters that she normally plays with -- they're on some quest involving a ring and some little folk -- and thus isn't often available to pull my tasty bacon out of the ever-hungry fire.)
      That's one of the not-much-talked-about-but-true advantages to not writing for a living. Unlike Holly Lisle, I can take a break and still have food on my table. Holly has to work hard -- and seriously, I know of no writer who works as hard, as creatively, and as productively as she does -- and she can't let up. She has a family to support. If she has a funk, she has to write her way through it.
      Always keep moving, I guess. That's the only way to deal with something. Go through it and out the other side. Got to remember -- however hard it is -- that every tunnel ends, that every cave (even those infested with vile sprites) can be mapped, and someday, eventually, if you keep moving, you'll make it back into the sunshine. Where a giant webwood spider will promptly eat you. Sigh.
      But after you get your spirit back into your body and turn that spider into goo -- not me; I resurrected and got out of there -- then you can keep moving forward. So that's what I'm doing. Moving forward again. Oh, I'm going to kill a few more creatures on WoW and vice versa, but it's time to pay bills, do laundry, clean house, write, and be me again.
      And if you're a member of WoW, stop by and say hi. My character is a night elf warrior known as Reevemer. He'll be the one with a spider eating his brain.