For five days I have sat before my computer, stared at the blank screen, and accomplished approximately as much as a man attempting to teach a stone to swim. My notebook sits nearby, its pages empty and its pen resting across the spine like a soldier who has received orders but decided, quite sensibly, not to report for duty.

I have words. Lord knows I have words. The trouble is that none of them seem particularly interested in cooperating.

My mind has been aflutter with election results, political arguments, the endless parade of opinions, and the uncomfortable business of reliving a nightmare I willingly entered back in 2000.

The extraordinary thing about memory is that just when you believe you have buried an unpleasant experience deep enough that even archaeologists would have difficulty finding it, something comes along and hands you a shovel. Suddenly, you are right back where you started, remembering the frustration, the arguments, the disappointments, and the extraordinary amount of yourself you invested in something that seemed, at the time, worth every ounce of effort.

Now I find myself standing at the same crossroads, although I am not entirely convinced I want to travel that road again. A familiar battle calls me from somewhere beyond the horizon, waving its flags and blowing its trumpets, reminding me that some things are worth fighting for and that silence can sometimes be mistaken for surrender.

Yet another voice, a little older and considerably more experienced, suggests that not every battle deserves another tour of duty. Some wars, it seems, will continue without our participation.

And therein lies my difficulty. I cannot decide whether what I am experiencing is self-restraint, self-protection, or pure cowardice.

Perhaps it is a little of all three, stirred together in the great emotional mixing bowl of an overactive mind. I have spent enough years believing that if something needs saying, somebody ought to say it, preferably before the opportunity disappears.

But a time when even the most determined participant must consider the cost of another engagement.

Meanwhile, I have discovered that my imagination has not suffered the same paralysis. It is alive and well, wandering through fictional towns, meeting characters who have never existed, and revisiting people and places that have long since become part of my personal collection of stories.

I can write about cowboys, Marines, distant oceans, lonely trails, and people who find themselves in circumstances considerably more complicated than they anticipated. Fiction offers a peculiar freedom. Its characters may encounter trouble, but at least I can decide when the shooting stops and whether anyone gets home for supper.

Even the stories lived are easier to approach. They belong to another kind of battlefield, one where the ammunition consists of memories and the casualties are usually limited to a bruised ego or an occasional recollection that makes me wonder what on earth I was thinking.

There is comfort in that territory. I can revisit an old adventure, laugh at my younger self, and perhaps discover that the fellow I once was wasn’t as wise as he thought.

So, for the moment, I have put my pen away and shut down my computer. Not because I have nothing to say, but because too much is rattling around inside my head to make any sense of it.

I suspect there is a difference between having something to write and being in the proper condition to write it. The former is a matter of words; the latter is of the heart.

I will return to the keyboard eventually. Perhaps tomorrow, perhaps next week, or perhaps when the political dust settles enough that I can see the road ahead without feeling compelled to march down it.

Until then, I shall let the fictional characters have their adventures and allow the stories already lived to entertain me. They are patient companions, and unlike politicians, they rarely demand that I take sides.

For now, I am declaring a temporary ceasefire. Whether it is an act of wisdom, preservation, or cowardice remains to be determined, but I have learned one thing over the years: a man does not have to fight every battle simply because someone has sounded the alarm.

And sometimes the most sensible thing a writer can do is let the world argue with itself for a while.