By Rich Keller
The second installment of Austin Powers movie series, The Spy Who Shagged Me, featured the time-lost protagonist in a precarious position. He had lost his Mojo, the inner spirit which let the swingin' spy be more than just a simple secret agent. The rest of the movie found Austin searching for the precious Mojo while simultaneously flirting with Heather Graham.
In many ways I felt like Austin Powers over the last few months. After weeks of non-stop productivity and imagination I lost my Mojo somewhere around the end of the school year. Coincidence? Absolutely! With the kids at home, my time in front of the computer decreased exponentially each week. It eventually led to a large accumulation of emails, a messy desk and numerous story ideas crowding my head.
Then came my 10-day trip to Costa Rica with 27 middle school students. I felt the experience would help me clear the internal baffles and return me to the United States a leaner, meaner producer of material. The opposite occurred. It took me almost a week to get back into the swing of home and work. And as I looked at the large pile of bills on my desk and the enormous amount of emails in my queue...
Well, my Mojo never came back. I couldn't move much further than the couch or the remote for a period of days -- mostly due to the introduction of gout to my body. The pain and the subsequent medication to reduce the pain threw me around the largest loop and kept me suspended in the air, not knowing what to do first.
I felt a glimmer of hope when the kids went back to school in the middle of August. However, with a modified half-day schedule due to weather and surgery for my wife, my attentions were drawn to maintaining some form of semblance in the house without cracking. I asked my Mojo to return several times during the hardest days, but it seemed to have a hearing problem.
Luckily, my Mojo and I reunited sometime this week. With my wife recovering and seven hours a day of quiet, I have been able to clear both my physical and mental desks of the stuff that piled up in the last four or five weeks; hence, the reason you're reading this blog. I've even been able to chip away at the email queue, though it still hovers around 500 items to review. The ideas have begun to organize themselves in my brain, thus permitting me to get back to the art of creative writing.
I have no doubt that I'm the only author in this world who encounters problems with their Mojo. Sometimes it's only for a few days, and other times it's for months or years. The only thing you can do in these situations is wait patiently for that moment where you and your Mojo can reunite to clean up everything left behind. Don't worry, it'll come back sooner or later. In the meantime don't panic. Watch some TV, sleep some more and get ready for the next wave to appear.
The second installment of Austin Powers movie series, The Spy Who Shagged Me, featured the time-lost protagonist in a precarious position. He had lost his Mojo, the inner spirit which let the swingin' spy be more than just a simple secret agent. The rest of the movie found Austin searching for the precious Mojo while simultaneously flirting with Heather Graham.
In many ways I felt like Austin Powers over the last few months. After weeks of non-stop productivity and imagination I lost my Mojo somewhere around the end of the school year. Coincidence? Absolutely! With the kids at home, my time in front of the computer decreased exponentially each week. It eventually led to a large accumulation of emails, a messy desk and numerous story ideas crowding my head.
Then came my 10-day trip to Costa Rica with 27 middle school students. I felt the experience would help me clear the internal baffles and return me to the United States a leaner, meaner producer of material. The opposite occurred. It took me almost a week to get back into the swing of home and work. And as I looked at the large pile of bills on my desk and the enormous amount of emails in my queue...
Well, my Mojo never came back. I couldn't move much further than the couch or the remote for a period of days -- mostly due to the introduction of gout to my body. The pain and the subsequent medication to reduce the pain threw me around the largest loop and kept me suspended in the air, not knowing what to do first.
I felt a glimmer of hope when the kids went back to school in the middle of August. However, with a modified half-day schedule due to weather and surgery for my wife, my attentions were drawn to maintaining some form of semblance in the house without cracking. I asked my Mojo to return several times during the hardest days, but it seemed to have a hearing problem.
Luckily, my Mojo and I reunited sometime this week. With my wife recovering and seven hours a day of quiet, I have been able to clear both my physical and mental desks of the stuff that piled up in the last four or five weeks; hence, the reason you're reading this blog. I've even been able to chip away at the email queue, though it still hovers around 500 items to review. The ideas have begun to organize themselves in my brain, thus permitting me to get back to the art of creative writing.
I have no doubt that I'm the only author in this world who encounters problems with their Mojo. Sometimes it's only for a few days, and other times it's for months or years. The only thing you can do in these situations is wait patiently for that moment where you and your Mojo can reunite to clean up everything left behind. Don't worry, it'll come back sooner or later. In the meantime don't panic. Watch some TV, sleep some more and get ready for the next wave to appear.
