There is the moment when you’ve turned off the lights and the television, because actually, you had fallen asleep. Or you finally quit reading blogs, surfing the net and playing games, and turn off the computer because it’s time to go to bed, you have to get up in a few more hours. Or you were reading, and your eyes had closed.

Signals had been received that the day is done and it’s time to retire. Your pets have recognized it and have assumed their positions, and the sounds of sleep from the remaining household are already percolating.

Then, as you’re accepting the moment and preparing to sleep, writing strikes. A scene, character, moment or idea that’s been troubling you has found its way into your thinking, shoving you awake. You see and know what you must write.

And you rush out to the notebook, the computer, the typewriter, and capture those words, that thought, that explanation, and more, because that was a block, a logjam, and now that it’s broken, the words are thundering out.

Or, there is the moment when you’re in your writing space, carving, hammering, defining the work in progress and it all comes together in sublime beauty, and you laugh aloud as you write, chortling on because you’re pleased — or crying because the scene affects you, or gulping down a breath, sweaty with fear and tension, because the scene has affected you.

And, there is the moment when you’re spent from the energy release of realization and creation and you sit back, returning to this space and existence that you left when you began to write. And you look around, assimilating where you are and what you’ve been doing. And you’re pleased and want to share it with someone, and must restrain yourself from grabbing passing strangers and servers and saying, “Hey, listen to what I just wrote. Isn’t this great?”

You can’t go home and tell others. That might jinx it. Also, they’re not up on the creative mind and its idiosyncrasies. They’re existing in the real world, dealing with the minutiae of being. Or they’re asleep and wouldn’t appreciate being awakened to be told what wonderful words you’ve discovered.

So you sit, pleased with the achievement, sighing with joy over what you’ve done, before turning out the lights and going to bed, as you planned — OMG, two hours ago.

Or, so you sit, sipping old, cold coffee and listening to reality reclaim you, finally acknowledging that you’ve spent a few hours doing this and that, oh my, you need to pee, so now would be a good time for a break.

But you don’t want to break, you don’t want to stop, because this is so wonderful as a feeling.

And there it is, the conundrum of writing, that so often, you’re writing alone and celebrating your achievements alone, and that your body and existence stops you from just writing on, and on, and on, as you want to do.

But it is the writing life.