Yes, I know it’s been a while. It’s been several months since my last blog post and, while I don’t flatter myself into thinking that it’s been noticeable to you, my readers, it has been noticeable to me. My reason for not writing? It’s been just too difficult to find something to write about – something lovely; something light or funny, perhaps; something joyful – in the midst of everything happening around us today.

But as a writer, if I can’t write … then what? I read; in fact, I read a lot (nothing too heavy these days). I try to limit my exposure to the news (good luck with that one, but I try). And I worry. More than I read. More than I eat chocolate (and that’s saying something). More than is good for me. Somehow the imagination that fuels my writing had turned on me – what had been serendipitous, whimsical, and somewhat enchanting had turned far too serious. The magic of “what if” that sparks my signature storytelling had lost its, well, magic.

And so.

Not an excuse for my absence of blog posts but, rather, an explanation (although that might be a distinction without a difference – I’m not certain).

In describing this situation recently to a dear friend (I believe she got it out of me by simply asking how I was), I realized how lost I sounded as a writer. It’s one thing to be lost while trying to work your way through writing a novel (believe me, it gives new meaning to the term “lost and found”), but it’s another to feel too empty to find the words that feed your soul. Stringing those words into sentences, and then those sentences into paragraphs, and then those paragraphs into a story, an essay, a blog post – well, it brings a feeling of satisfaction, of completeness, and of worth. A feeling I had all but forgotten.

If you’re born to be a writer, you pull your words around you like a soft, (insert favorite color here) blanket and draw on them for strength, for warmth, and for comfort. Imagine trying to capture fireflies in a jar but having those fireflies flutter by so quickly that they just won’t be caught. Rather than a jar full of luminescence, you’re left with an occasional twinkle in the night – achingly beautiful but achingly out of reach.

But then. Remarkably, this very wise, very sensitive, very perceptive friend (call her a fairy godmother, perhaps? – ah, there’s a bit of the enchantment back again!) offered me the possibility of a way back in. A chance, perhaps, to reclaim the joy of writing by finding a way to try to write again – this time through her suggestion of journaling (not something I’ve ever found appealing). I’ve always avoided journaling because I perceived it as “writing on demand” without an assignment attached to it (unlike writing an ad, for example, or writing a brochure or a press release, or writing a list of product names). How would I find direction? But then again, what did I have to lose?

As it turns out, once I began journaling (and beginning was the most challenging part), I felt a door opening to me. A door leading from the pain of not being able to write with any real feeling or authenticity or heart to the chance – the chance! – to find the words again. It has started me on my way to discovering the words that work and, most important, to finding the colors, the music, and the love that those words evoke, instill, and express. I’ve discovered that, for me, journaling is the most personal and freeing of art forms. And in that freedom lies its power. Since beginning, I – saying this here with bated breath, too tentative to utter these words aloud – hope that this will be terra firma for finding my way all the way back to writing.

When creativity lies dormant, an energy, a purpose, a life force feels like it’s missing. When it raises its head again, like the very first buds of spring emerging a bit recklessly but so hopefully from the winter snows, it is a burst of beauty for the soul.

So there you are. That’s where I’ve been. It’s one word at a time, one thought at a time, one hour (or even a few minutes) at my computer at a time. Some words dazzle. Some just sit there. Some flow. And some chug uphill very slowly but with determination, sort of like the little engine that could.

I think I can. Here I am.

©2026 Claudia Grossman