I have no good reason for not writing on my blog. But I do have about a dozen bad ones. They all come down to this — writing requires paying attention. And sometimes I’m not really paying attention. At least, I’m not paying attention to what’s right in front of me. The stuff that would make good material. I’m paying attention to the mental toe-jam inside my head. And it doesn’t always congeal into a decent story. It’s just hamster-inside-a-wheel crap that doesn’t have much of a punchline. Yes, in the past month, my kids have done and said some adorable, funny things. But I haven’t captured any of them. I did enjoy them in the moment, though. Sometimes that’s enough.

Last night I dreamed that Madonna called me to chat. (That’s Madonna the rock star, not Madonna, the Virgin Mary.) I was so shocked that I could barely speak to her. She wanted to know how my novel was coming along. My dream mind was shouting, “THIS IS YOUR BIG BREAK!” But I was so stunned that I could barely describe to her what the book was about. “I need to look at my notes,” I kept telling her lamely. I was so disappointed in myself when I woke up — I had blown the pitch, as they say in Hollywood.

So now I’m attempting to do a little dream interpretation. Maybe Madonna represents the pinnacle of self-induced fame, at least as it’s defined by our culture. Her phone call to me was like a hand extending down from celebrity heaven, but I wasn’t ready. I froze, jelly headed.

I’m struggling with my novel now — I thought I’d have the first draft finished by Christmas but my writing has been flat and rushed. I need to slow down, breathe into it. Why am I doing this, I keep asking myself. Is it fame I’m really after? God, I hope not, but then why was Madonna, of all people, calling me in my dreams?

This week in the New York Times, there was an interview with writer Herta Muller, who just won the Nobel Prize in Literature. She said, “I am now nothing better and I’m nothing worse. It’s O.K., it’s nice, but it won’t change anything for me. My inner thing is writing. That I can hold on to.” That’s where I need to be — writing for writing’s sake, not for what it could do for me. Not because if I sell my book I could get a swimming pool. Maybe writing, art, any creative endeavor, is something akin to love — you can’t love a person solely for what he or she can do for you. That isn’t love. That’s just capitalism.

There are lots of misconceptions about writers and writing. There’s the idea that writing comes from divine inspiration — that the muse whispers in your ear and you write it down blissfully as you’re wearing a smoking jacket and tiarra. Then there’s the idea of the writer as the matyr, the one who suffers, who opens a vein and bleeds on the page.

Here’s what writing is like for me: It’s like having a small child whining in my ear constantly: play with me, play with me. And I say, “No, I can’t right now. I have to work/cook/wash dishes/do laundry. I’ll play with you later.” So I ignore it and images flash through my mind that would make great scenes, but my hands are full of chicken parts and I can’t write them down.

Finally I get a break and I tell the child, “Okay, I can play with you now.” But it says, “Nope.” And I say, “pullease,” and it says, “Uh-uh. I’m too tired. I want to watch TV. Forget it.”

Every once in a while the child and I are in synch and when we are it feels like flying in a dream. But most of the time, there’s this push/pull that is very much like motherhood. The same struggle for control, the same frustration over time.

I can’t write about what’s really happening to me right now. Great big elephantine gobs of change are stomping through my life. If gobs can stomp. I think they can on Willie Wonka. I digress. I can’t talk about what’s happening because I have to keep radio silence at the moment. I promise a full report after it’s over.

All I can say is it’s really scary when God listens with both ears. Usually I think He’s listening with one ear, the way I listen to my kids, saying yeah, yeah, I’ll get you some pink milk in a minute. Just let me finish this important grown-up thing I’m doing. But when God pauses, sets His work aside and looks you in the eye, it’s a bit mind blowing.

The last time God listened to me like this, I wasn’t even praying with my mind. I was praying somewhere deep inside of my soul for something I wouldn’t even admit that I wanted. It was a man who belonged to someone else. And yet, through a series of divine coincidences, this man was delivered to me. To be mine. For the rest of my life.

Now my soul has been crying out for something else. The chance to write. Every day it asks for this, even though I say, “Shut up now, that’s not doing anybody else any good. That’s not going to put food on the table or clothes on ours backs.” But my soul keeps crying out anyway. It wants what it wants.