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I haven’t posted in this blog in a long time. I’ve been in a dry spell.

I thought I had lost my emotional capacity. Whenever I was listening to music or playing guitar or singing or trying to write or read or whatnot in the past year and a half, I couldn’t feel it anymore. I couldn’t feel that energy, that passion, those dreams, those feelings I once had. You know when you hear a touching song, read a cell phone novel or watch a good drama and it brings tears to your eyes? When your body shudders and you feel a shiver creeping up your spine, goosebumps crawling over your skin because you feel the emotions physically? Those moments. It wouldn’t come. It was like a disease. It felt terminal.

No matter what happened, whether I forced myself to write something, went through creative writing class in school, which had so many inspiring therapeutic words and moments, I still couldn’t feel it.

But suddenly, yesterday, when I listened to new songs that I haven’t heard before or in a while, namely Nano’s “Hysteria”, and “Our Story”, things came back and like something had clicked, the artistic abstract portion of my brain has reconnected with these channels, canals, rivers, pipelines, tubes, wires and cables that feed into my physical body. My fingers are moving again and it’s rusty but it’s flowing again. Where it feels like my dreams have come back and dreams are once again flowing into reality. It’s a great feeling.

There are these times where we have this strange “writer’s block”, hit depression and fall into a pit and wonder when we will be able to climb out of it and ascend once again to where we belong.

I hope that the ascension will be to higher heights than before. When we go through those dry spells as artists, it feels forever, it feels hopeless and that it would never end. But it does. And it comes back. Life is such, things fade in and out. But art is always there, always in our blood, and it will flow once again.

What I’ve learned through the past year is to be patient and to let life move at its own pace. I still often walk through book stores and wonder if I will see my book up on a shelf some day. It might be a very peculiar feeling. I can imagine myself looking at it from a customer’s perspective and wonder if it appeals to me or not. Other times perhaps I will look at it as if it is a painter’s piece. It’s just there in front of me and I’m trying to make sense of what I’m seeing. Of course that’s just imagination. I look forward to such a day. It’s hard to keep the self afloat though and not think that it’s far far away. I’ve always rushed things and felt frustrated when I haven’t achieved what I want to, or ought to yet, but in due time, mysteries will fall into place.

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In terms of writing projects, I’ve been writing two prose fiction novels. It feels like my writing skill and maturity in thinking has surpassed the limits of a cell phone novel structure. While cell phone novels still are a part of me, it helps to write full prose and let the long-winded eloquence just flow.

Espresso Love – A contemporary romantic magical-realism piece. It feels a little forced, as I started writing it before this moment I mentioned before. But it has been fun. Writing it is like letting something release relentlessly from the subconscious without thinking, even though it sounds so philosophical and complex. It should be interesting though it needs a lot of editing.

Harbringer’s Child – A traditional Tolkien style fantasy novel. I hope there will be a nice twist that sets it apart from the usual fantasy genre later on in the story. We’ll see how it looks. I’ve been watching Game of Thrones in the past few months haha

I am still updating my cell phone novel, Move, and now that I’ve tapped back into my emotions, it will drive me to continue this. Move is a very personal piece, full of melancholy loneliness and philosophy. Later on, it will get brighter and more hopeful, I believe.

Yesterday I also finally set off to continue the pioneer cell phone novel in the West that started everything off Secondhand Memories and set up an official and separate Book Two for easier access and reading. I will update both the original “file” and this Book Two file. Aoi’s story shall continue. Poor girl.

Cell phone novelists are also invited to contact me about our Facebook group that we have going, which is growing all the time, full of fun and funny antics and collaborative creative activities.

Anyway, there we are, the first blog post of this year. It was mind-numbingly cold over the break in North America, like the arctic had devoured our continent, and delivered us into the next ice age. But it’s looking a little better now. I still miss Japan and well, traveling and adventuring across the world to different countries and meeting different cultures. It’s not the same staying in North America all the time.