I’m not a romantic writer. Not that I haven’t written romantic words before. (Reader have I told you that your eyes are deep pools of rubies? Uhh, I mean sapphires.) More that I don’t require beautiful, extravagant locations to create my stories. Nor am I a public writer, who sits in coffee shops drinking in the energy of people around me. I am an artist of private spaces where I can listen to the quiet tinkering and occasional crescendos of my mind.

For the past three weeks. I have been living in the home of a kind Quebecois family. Although there are quiet spaces here, there is a distinct lack of comfort. Or rather there is shortage of the comfort that I seek; the familiarity of my own possessions, voices of loved ones, a desk or table in a hidden away space.

Consequently although my creative tank is often full, it’s difficult to pen words while balancing my netbook on my thighs, trying to ignore the sensation of my knees heating up while I gradually lose feeling in my bum. Thus, each evening I retire to bed, having written nary a “the” or an “at”.

National Novel Writing Month was many things; a challenge, an albatross on my neck, a reason to drink copious amounts of alcohol alone, but it taught me that writing, or the perceived inability to write is always and only in one’s head. No matter the day, eventually I came up with content.  Hence even though I fear that I will never regain sensation in my butt cheeks, I will continue to write. It shall be my “five miles uphill, both ways in the snow” story that I shall tell to fledgling writers when I am old and I can’t feel my butt at all, no matter the position I sit in.