A wonderful emotion to get things moving when one is stuck is anger. It was anger more than anything else that had set me off, roused me into productivity and creativity.

Krishna children were taught that in the spiritual world there were no parents, only souls and hence this justified their being kept out of view from others, cloistered in separate buildings and sheltered from the evil material world.

In the back of my mind was the constant hankering, almost yearning, to write but something always stopped me in my tracks. Or if I did find my way to put a pen to paper or finger on a keyboard I'd give up after a few minutes. I'd find other things to do: Anything but writing.

It was not uncommon for the children to be told they were being treated this way because it was their bad karma and they must have hurt a child in a past life.

My block was due to two overlapping factors: laziness and lack of discipline.

My inner critic who had begun piping up about how hopeless I was and how I didn't know to write.

I was a new devotee of Eastern mysticism and even though I did not join that particular group, I could well have done. They seemed a bit extreme but I regarded myself as not quite ready.