Today I got one step closer to getting back to work on my latest work of fiction. For the past two weeks, I have made the conscious decision to put my fiction work aside in favor of making good on some website/graphic design debts owed to some friends.

Admittedly, I haven't hated the work. I enjoy graphic design, site design, and all sorts of artistic conundrums. But after finishing a logo (for Brad), site designs/layouts/greymatter implementations (Kat's and Sean's sites), and another greymatter implementation (for Jessica), my brain is just about worn out.Not only have I not picked up my pen in a few days, I haven't even wanted to. The lack of desire to write tells me what I need to know; the creative portion of my brain is zapped, and needs a recharge.

Over the years, I've often wondered why it works like this, and have said as much to Brad recently. At any point in time I can sit down with my design and layout programs and end up with a perfectly competent—if uninspired—site design.

But the fount that makes it happen—the spark, the creativity—ebbs and flows. After a period of heavy creativity, the mind demands a rest, a recharge. Then, of its own accord, the resting period ends and the urge to create begins. First a nibble, a thought, an idea, and then an all-consuming desire to create.

The ebb, the recharge time, is heavy yet strangely empty.

Today I felt it coming. After putting in so many hours this weekend to get domesticat thoroughly skinnable, I correctly assumed that my design energy was just about sapped. But, instead, I decided to give one last push, and finish up a few sites that I'd promised some friends that I'd do for them.

They are—with one exception—done. I've completed two of them today.

I would love nothing more right now than to grab my notebook and my pen and settle down in the guest bedroom to write myself to sleep. But I know—know, as surely as I write this sentence—that I'm coasting down to sleep even as I finish this sentence, and that anything I write this evening will be crossed out in a few days' time.

Tomorrow, I think, will be a day without design. Errands need running; a trip to the bank for certain, the butcher's and the farmers' market if I have time. House chores: litterbox cleaning, laundry, plants.

I have one more design left to do for one last friend. While running errands and doing other chores I will neither think obsessively about the design or thoroughly avoid thinking about it. If it comes up, I'll mull it over, let the thoughts take their course, and then let them go.

In a few days, I'll be ready to sit down with my tools again, and I'll take the offhanded ideas and mental whisperings and put them together into a design. I will build it, and then I will be done with sites for now.

Then, my friends, it's back to the book, and back to writing short essays for this site. No working title on the book just yet. In time, one will come to me, I'm certain.