Trying again

I've hit a writing slump over the past few months. For a while it was just because I was burned out from a fiasco with school, then it was because I was stressing about starting a new job. Lately the reason has less to do with external as with internal stresses. I have been terrified to put fingers to keyboard. I am nervous that nothing good will ever come from my brain, much less my heart, ever again.

But I can't rest in not writing either. I read a book recently about C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkein(see my "Inklings" blog on Modern Myth Makers). Here's a quote that struck me as a kick in the pants to get me writing again. It's from C.S. Lewis novel, The Screwtape Letters which is a series of letters from a senior demon advising his trainee on ways to tempt humans and fight the "Enemy," or God:

"The Enemy allows this disappointment to occur on the threshold of every human endeavour. It occurs when the boy who has been enchanted in the nursery by Stories from the Odyssey buckles down to really learning Greek. It occurs when lovers have got married and begin the real task of learning to live together. In every department of life it marks the transition from dreaming aspiration to laborious doing. The Enemy takes this risk because he has a curious fantasy of making all these disgusting little human vermin into what He calls His "free" lovers and servants -- "sons" is the word He uses.... Desiring their freedom, He refuses to carry them, by their mere affections and habits, to any of the goals which he sets before them.... And therein lies our opportunity. But also therein lies our danger. If once they get through this initial dryness successfullly, they become much less dependent on emotion and therefore much harder to tempt."

So I'm going to try again, regardless of the twisting in the pit of my stomach. It won't be comfortable, but then not writing is not comfortable either.