The universe, in its infinite wisdom, decided to throw me a bone yesterday. I was suffering from writer's block. I don't even like to admit that I'm suffering from it when I am. As if giving voice to the stone wall between me and my characters will somehow make it even harder to scale than it already is. However, the universe must have had a little extra time, perhaps there were no stars going supernova yesterday, and decided to show, rather than tell, me how to get out of my funk.

People. That's the secret. REAL people, not the imaginary kind.

I spend most of my day hanging out with my imaginary friends. It can get kinda lonely at times. Yesterday, people were calling me left and right. An old friend whose life with three kids gets as crazy as anybody's and whom I haven't spoken with in a few months, called me out of the blue. The brother of a very old friend got my email and dropped a line to say hi, out of the blue. A friend who lives in Germany happens to be in town visiting and stopped by for dinner.

The universe was trying to tell me something: you, type A personality writer, walk away from the keyboard. Give your story time to jell. Talk to the real world. (Okay, and eat some chocolate, maybe even two pieces. Get crazy - boy has the meaning of that term changed since I was in college).

The amazing part, it worked. I came up with an idea as to how to fix the road block in my story while I was out running this morning. So thank you universe, I appreciate the bone. I'll try and do better next time. In the words of the great Buddha: Let the wall crumble away, rather than try to scale it. Or, something like that.