There are moments, now and then. The seconds where things become incredibly clear, and all at once, you understand yourself and others better than before.

And usually, when you have a moment like that–no matter how much you’d like explain it to someone else–it’s something you just have to experience. There’s no way I could have explained this to the girl I was talking to, but… I know you will get it.

We’re both writers. We both have the same general dreams of getting published, and so forth. We talk, now and then, about what we’re working on.

She asked me how my project is going, and I had to ask whether she meant the website (I was checking stats) or the book. The book. Duh. Should’ve known that. I told her I was on chapter 26. She was impressed.

I asked her how her writing was going, and… well, she’s hit a dry spell. She told me about all the things that have come up. Computer down. No Microsoft Word. No battery. Too tired after a long day at work. Family. Activities at her church.

Life, in other words.

There was not one thing on her list that wasn’t… ordinary.

I sympathized, and gave her the websites for Libre Office and YWriter. Fixed the problems that could be fixed.

And maybe she believes that the right software will fix her problems.

I don’t.

I believe that I got through the conversation without laughing, shouting, or crying. I did not grab her by the shirt front and shake her. I didn’t even roll my eyes, and that was my accomplishment for the day.

The whole time she was “blocked,” I was writing. My sister died. I went on a necessity trip to another state to clean out her apartment. I made arrangements. I watched my family disintegrate.  I was writing, anyway.

I came back to work, and I’m still more or less balanced between bursting into tears and being angrier than I’ve ever been in my life, and I’m still writing.

Not as fast as during the good times. Probably not as well. But I kept up the blog, and I’m forcing out a few hundred words of (not quite palatable) fiction a day.

The girl I was talking to doesn’t know any of that.

She’s still looking for some other solution. And it’s too bad. She’s talented.

It takes time to write a book. Things happen. You write, anyway. A line, or two, or twenty. That’s how you write a book.