I've been in a fallow period, writing-wise, for a few years now. Three years ago, when my oldest son was 2 1/2, I began to write weekly with a teacher, and that developed into a huge project to renovate a novel I had tried to write over a decade. It was maybe not the easiest way to go about writing a novel, as I was taking a story that was remotely based on episodes from my life (hello autobiographical first novel - isn't that classic?) and built a story around it. In retrospect it seems easier to have a story in place first. But, Miss Becky Home Ecky NEVER does anything the easy way. Why, when you can suffer for your art instead?? But I digress. I went through a hugely creative period and was exquisitely happy writing that novel. Daily, as I wrote, I would get that beautiful soaring feeling that comes when you are in the zone. I took that as a sign that this was what I was meant to do. I mean, can Julia Cameron and her gazillion-selling books about The Writer's Way be wrong about that?

I still love that book. I have put it out into the world, and it may get published or it may not, but it brought me huge amounts of happiness.

Then, I got pregnant with my second son, and if you've ever been pregnant at age 40 with a preschooler at home, you'll know what I'm talking about when I say that I was TIRED. So making that second blessed baby and bringing him into the world and getting our family adjusted and renovating a house and moving was my gigantic creative undertaking of the next few years. To say that I am in a fallow period is actually quite unfair, as my husband and I have created this family, and now, a new home, in record time. It's fallow in terms of pages written -- but not in terms of life lived.

At age 40, I allowed myself to be a vessel for creativity, against a lot of odds. It wasn't the biblical Sarah in her 80s, but hey, I too had given up. Now I know that when the time is right I will be a vessel again - for a book, not a baby! - and I know it will come in its own time.