A lot of what I'm going to say here will be very familiar to some readers, or may seem terribly obvious. Bear with me, though.

I'm a writer. I say that to remind myself that I am a writer, not to boast or show-off. I'm technically a published author, but I've not landed a book deal (yet) nor have I made any best-seller lists, of any kind. That's okay, though, because most writers don't. The words don't care, I think. They just want to be read. It's hard work. Other writers know that, while it's effing cool to be a writer, it's not remotely glamorous. It can be fun, but it's usually hard bloody work.

When the words are coming out and the story is flowing, then it's amazing. It can truly take you out of your own head, pushing the world away as you exist in another on the page or screen in front of you. That's quite something.

I often find myself at odds with my own inertia, especially when it comes to writing. Some things, like my poems, just bubble up and demand to be written, regardless of how I feel. Likewise, I might sit down to write one and there's nothing there. That's a different kind of writing, I think. Feel free to disagree. But mostly, I think about writing more than I actually perform the act of putting words onto a thing. And when I'm not actually doing it, I feel even less like a writer than I usually do.

For many weeks, recently, the words were only a trickle. They'd not come easily, if at all. I would be writing as part of my day job and as part of the odd freelance gig in the evenings, but the self-generated creative stuff wasn't coming out.

Then the fear of deadlines for the next Desolation book kicked in, and I got about 12k written in a couple of weeks. It wasn't easy, but the words were coming out.

And as I'm writing that stuff, ideas for other things jostle for attention, as if they've suddenly noticed that I'm paying attention again. A project that's not been touched in months now has a few hundred more words written, along with a pile of references entered into Evernote for later reference.

I've also not played World of Warcraft or Star Trek: Online in weeks. Well, aside from the odd 10 minutes on WoW, I find that the need for distraction isn't there any more. I neither want nor need distracted from the work of writing.

The day job takes a lot of energy. And you need energy in order to start writing. What I need to remember is that once I get started, the words generate their own energy.

I think that's the difference between writing and not writing. Even if you have to force yourself to write, chain yourself figuratively to a desk and laptop, it's worth it. Because one word leads to another and soon you're not pulling words out - you're trying to stop the flood. 

Not all the words will be good or right, but they'll be there. You can edit them later. But they'll be there.