Kage Baker did not personally suffer from writer’s block.

Oh, she had times when the words did not come easily, or at all – on the rare occasions when that happened, she resorted to a number of strategies to trick her brain into resuming the story: going outside and gardening. Working on another story – she usually had two or three going at once. Discussing what should happen next with me; that usually involved recapping the tale to the point where it stalled, then looking at me and asking : “What happens next?” And no amount of whining and yelling would suffice until I started throwing out ideas … as I said, she did not personally suffer from writer’s block.

Few of my ideas were precisely what Kage needed, but after we had tossed around demented plot lines for awhile, a sort of outline would appear – in Kage’s mind, thick black lines that she could then begin to fill in with colours from whatever palette she had conjured up between us. But whatever method she chose to kick start the engine of her brain, the block never lasted very long – seldom hours, usually minutes.

And then Kage was back to her insane output, riding the lightning in the thunderstorm of her mind, assigning gods and heroes to their duties in the only world that mattered: hers.

Maybe that was the secret, why it worked at all. Kage wasn’t fond of the regular world, and it mattered little to her. She had lived in her mind since childhood; by the time she grew up, there were a thousand worlds for her to to inhabit inside her own skull. She skipped among them almost effortlessly, chasing among the stars of her own private galaxy, where every constellation and asterism was a gossip leaning on the fence of the Milky Way, offering insider tips on the lives of gods and men.

Thinking back on it now, I’m surprised she ever talked to me at all when she wrote. I asked her once or twice why, in the wide rolling world, she needed my input, and she told me, “Because you can see what I’m doing. And I can’t, always. After all – Gardner said these were shared worlds. You gonna argue with Gardner Dozois?”

Well, of, course I wasn’t. I’m not as dumb as I look. And I remember the panel at a convention where the sainted Mr. Dozois made that comment – it was a panel about, among other things, Kage’s work, and so she and I had come incognito (I wore a knitted cap) and we sat in the back … which did us no good, as Mr. Dozois saw instantly through Kage’s disguise of sunglasses and turban-wrapped head scarf. But he declared that Kage was technically invisible and/or not there art all, and assigned me the job of communicating with her telepathically to answer any questions put to her – because, he said, he felt we were working in a shared world. I was so stunned and flattered by the comment that I was rendered speechless, and had to be elbowed in the ribs by invisible Kage. I passed it off as a muscle spasm.

I tried to interpret her answers to questions after that, and it got amazingly silly. I was trying not to give away any real plot points, so I lied a lot (Kage had devised all sorts of alternate truths to avoid revealing plots) and also put out a lot of the insanity we had actually come up with in brain-storming sessions, but that Kage had never put in because it was, well, bat-shit crazy … anyway, I went on with weird interpretations of Kage’s thoughts while she raked the room with a black basilisk glare from behind her glasses. Occasionally she tried to interject some comment with a writhing charade that would have done credit to the Island of Silent Women.*

It must have been funny enough, because people kept calling out questions to our bargain-rate Delphic act. When the panel ended, Kage ripped off her shades and turban, and was gathered back into the writing fold from the dark, cold fields of invisibility. However, as she confided to Mr, Dozois later, she had always found invisibility to be the most elegant fashion choice anyway …

Me, I just like woolen caps. And conventions. And wandering around in Kage’s head, where the world was always that tiny diorama you can see if you stare into a marble or a faceted gem. Maybe that’s what I need right now, to push my own faltering mind over into the world of writing once again. I want to write, I really really do.

Oh, infirm of purpose! I’m gonna go stare into a ruby, and look for the road over the hills to the sea …

*From A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum. With the immortal Zero Mostel, who did pretty good writhing mime himself.