So yesterday I had come up with all the reasons why I wanted to spend yet another glorious Labour Day weekend hunched over a computer trying to wrench words out of my head.

Perhaps it will rain, I reasoned. Maybe it will be cold and grey and I won’t feel like I’m missing the last few hours of summer.

Nope. It’s spectacular out there today – sun shining, pooffy little white clouds making the sky look EVEN BLUER, cool breeze but still summery.

And here I sit, bum going numb, brain freezing, 5000+ words of drivel written so far.

It’s still at the give up point. I could stop anytime. And yet, it’s that freedom to stop that pushes me forward, makes me want to complete it once again. By this time tomorrow, I no doubt will have decided that it makes more sense to work on existing projects than waste time grinding out what may be utter junk. I always do around then. I ignore myself and plunge on.

Or I may hit that sweet spot, that bit where your characters take over and you are dying to see what happens to them as you throw obstacles in their way.

And that is why I do this, again and again. That feeling is the best one out there in writing, for me (well, except getting paid, or winning a prize or whatever). No, it’s even bigger than those, because at that mystical time, you know, you know for sure and certain, that you are blessed.

Like the musician playing or singing the perfect note, like the artist with that perfect paint stroke, you are in the creative zone. And there just ain’t any better place to be.