Kage Baker – even she, the most determined person I have ever known – would sometimes throw herself into her armchair and give up.

Tonight, Dear Readers, I am in just such a slough: not of despair, but a sucking vacuum of creativity. However, I’m not especially unhappy about it; I’m in good company with Kage, recalling her too giving up on the odd winter evening when she was just too tired to type.

I remember one time … a deadline was fast approaching, and all Kage’s attention had been focussed relentlessly for, like, a week on Monkey Kombat from “Escape from Monkey Island.”

(Kage could not defeat Big Jojo alone. To this day, I cannot abide bananas.)

“I am but a mump,” she declared one evening, in a hollow voice. “A boneless mump. The energy vortexes of the universe have whirled me round and spit me out.”

“Vortices,” I corrected heartlessly.

“I’m the victim of a cosmic swirly, and you’re arguing Latin grammar? You pedantic Welsh person,” Kage moaned. “All my creative energy has been sucked out of me, leaving me a mere miserable mump.”

As I recall, I started giggling at this point.

“Barbarian. Soon,” she said dreamily, “I shall bloom into a mump blossom. And then I shall go to seed.”

Which left me in helpless hysterics of laughter. Kage want on at some length about the tragic condition of mumpdom, which mainly consisted of not being able to write. And not caring.

And that, Dear Readers, is where I am tonight. Mind you, I did refine and send to my agent two new stories today. “Keep writing!” they told me. I am taking them at their word.

Of course, being as I am maturing into a full-bodied mump blossom, I’m doing this in an armchair, with several pillows, watching “Antiques Roadshow” and writing this by the light of the Christmas tree. On my Kindle.

Scattering mump seeds as I go. One may germinate into a new tale, or an old one, soon.

I shall wait comfortably amid my pillows and see what happens. Hopefully it will carry me along to victory!