Southern Fried Chicas

Something very strange happened last week.

For the first time in the last four years or so…I had NOTHING OUT THERE.

No submissions.  No proposals.  Nothing sent to contests, critters, nothing for consideration.
It wasn’t planned.  I think it was just that the writing has gone slowly, a couple of rejections reared their ugly heads, and one or two things that had obviously been buried in a time capsule somewhere came back, unloved, in the mail.

It was the eeriest feeling!  Absolutely nothing seeking publication.
And suddenly there was a demonic little voice somewhere in the back of my head whispering, “Pssst!  You’re free and clear!  They can’t touch you now.”
“But I’m an author,” I murmured.  “I want to be read.  Don’t I?”
“Pssst!  No rejections, no worries, no waiting.  You can walk away.  Go back to being a reader.  Remember reading?  Nobody will notice.  Think how much easier your life will be.  Simplify, simplify…”

And for a few days I did nothing.  No writing, no queries, no fretting over a synopsis.  Oh, I’d twitch a bit when a story idea would tease me, or need to sit on my hands every time I approached a keyboard.  But I listened to the little voice.  The voice was good, the voice was wise.  The voice would lead me home.
It was my own subconscious that beat out the little voice.  It was the dream about killing someone who’d been infected by alien invaders and was spreading the infection to innocent people.  Yeah, that dream.  You know the one.
Unfortunately, I managed to become infected in the process, so that a peculiar sort of fungus began to grow on my body.  It wasn’t unlike the little growing things that sprout on a potato when left lying around too long, sort of green and crisp, and it made a nerve-wracking cracking sound when I brushed it off the surface of my skin, but clumps of them would always come back in force, and…
Well, you get the idea.
And ya gotta kind of figure…if you’re dreaming that you’re sprouting fungus, you really need to get your ass moving, huh?

So I’ve got one proposal out at the moment that I’m hopeful about, and I’m keeping lots of antifungal tea tree oil handy.  Just in case.

What keeps your dream in motion?