Writer’s Block

“What the hell,” I used to say, “this is easy”. Now you sit around talking to yourself, telling your friends of your next project, receiving their praise or fretting over their consternation. You take your time and you sit down and you start writing something, but that something never becomes anything. You use to be able to knock something out every week; now it’s once a month, and that’s only because of constant editing to throw all the things you’ve written together into what you hope is a humorous hodgepodge. What is it that you’re lacking? Have you become washed up at something that was just a hobby to keep you from going mad from doctor-ordered sobriety? No, this is just the inner monologue of someone with writer’s block.

What are you now lacking that you previously possessed? Hell, maybe you never had anything to begin with except for a bunch of unheard rants. What do you need to help you write? A woman? A woman could do the trick. A woman could help get you out of this rut. Do you have to go out in search of this woman? Maybe write about one that got away from you? Do you write a love story and hope it wins a new girl over? What can be so hard about writing a love story? You’ve been in love: it’s not that hard to describe the ups and downs. At times like these, perhaps all that’s needed to jog the old noggin is a good sexual muse. It only makes sense: all the greats had one.

You start to worry. You look in the mirror and try and understand who the man is that’s staring back at you. What does this man know? What can he say that so many before him have never said? This man sure is looking rough. He could use a shower, to begin with, and a clean shave. Does he have grey hairs? You become worried over this and start looking for those hairs that a man your age shouldn’t have. You find a few and wonder what enormous events in your life have brought on enough stress to bring these out? Maybe that’s what’s wrong: you have no great life experiences. Maybe the dullness and loneliness of the everyday is to blame for not having anything to say. You need to get out and live. That’s what it is! You haven’t lived life to its fullest. What is holding you back? You quickly think of the things that would hold anyone back from achieving greatness.

Fear. Is fear what holds people back from great things? What are people afraid of though? Hell, what are you afraid of? Heights aren’t a problem. Claustrophobia maybe? No, that’s not a problem. You’ve walked in crowded cities such as Chicago and New York and didn’t have a problem. Safe sex isn’t scary if you never have it. Women can be pretty scary. That is one thing that scares you from time to time because no matter how many you have been with you can never figure them out. Family: you worry about your family and what will become of them if you go somewhere. That could be it, but you’ve never worried about them before, so why would you start now? You sit around and you rack your brain over what it is that that scares you the most, but in a cocky manner you brush it aside and say you’re fearless. Perhaps that’s the fear itself: not knowing what scares you exactly. Whatever it is must be absolutely terrible and shall only strike you once you’re finally about to hit it. The fear of success, not just as a word or in general, but in everything: in love, in business, in life. Once you succeed, then it’s all over. The chase is gone, no more new, just a lot of the same boredom. Success means eventual, inevitable boredom. Once you find ‘your way’ in life, what novelty is left? You will be on the right path and that will be that. No more fun. Job, wife, kids, happy family, but where’s your fun? Does your fun now only lie in a few rounds of golf with the boys? Your fear is being stable; your fear is finally making it. Then again, this mini rant could just be another excuse for you to blame Bush for ruining the world. Dick.

Are you going about things all wrong? When you first started this you were on a mission to civilize. You wanted to be the thing few in your generation listened to anymore or even conceived on their own: common sense. You could sit down and write something to men about how they need to grow up. You could write something to women and advise them not to put so much thought into the silly things in life, like doubting their commitment to save themselves for marriage, or the idea that enjoying sex makes them a whore. Like the notion that being too friendly will lead men on, or that being in a relationship is everything. Like the idiotic impression that models are what real women look like, or that if you spend enough money on your looks you will become beautiful, or the idea that you are suppose to get married and have children, abortion is a sin, being gay is a sin, pandas are cute, etc.

You could always go in another direction and tell people how to have an actual conversation. There are plenty of things people in general need to know about conversations. You could write a piece about how people should avoid topics such as that amazing dinner they made, their relationship and how amazing it is, starting a conversation off with “Dude something hilarious happened last night”, your animals, the tattoos you want to have, how drunk they got last night, gossip in general, their sex life, their weight problem, their belief in a higher power, gun control, how supply side economics works, their requests that you pray for So-and-So or at least keep them in your thoughts (because your god certainly has no problem with you bothering him since he has a grand scheme and all), your life, etc. Then again, those are all just things I don’t care about so that might not be so helpful.

What if you just wrote all these thoughts down and claimed you had writers block? That could work. Yeah, that could work! That would be the easiest way around admitting you’re too lazy to actually think of the perfect introduction or ending. You could end it anyway you saw fit really. So the Pope walks into a bar…