… … … I got nuthin’.

Let’s talk about the bane of every creative person’s existence: a creative block! In this instance, writer’s block! Because I sure as heck have it right now, holy cow.

For weeks now it’s been like pulling teeth for me to churn out anything. Comic reviews, my monthly op-ed, this cockamaimie thing...I’m struggling to find topics and concentration and just words in general, and let me tell you, it sucks. I just sit there and stare at a blank screen and my brain is equally blank and it’s annoying and it makes my noggin hurt. I stress myself out trying to formulate an idea and then I get frustrated because I can’t and then I get annoyed with myself and I start putting things off and then deadlines get closer and closer and I start to panic. I always manage to get things done on time, but the quality of the work suffers. Though it’s not like I could have saved it by getting it done earlier, because earlier was full of no ideas. Talk about drain-circling.

Things I do to try to shake the Block Monster/put off having to deal with the Block Monster:

• Coffee!
• Nap
• Unnecessary research
• Add things to my Amazon wishlist
• Take things off of my Amazon wishlist
• Internet ‘window shopping’
• Watch the autoplay previews of YouTube videos on the home screen but never actually watch the videos with sound
• Text people
• Clean things
• Contemplate the futility of existence
• Pester the rats
• Refresh Twitter every 4.6 seconds
• Whine
• Pout
• Curse the world
• Make lists

I have just sat here staring at the blinking cursor for twenty minutes. That’s pretty demoralizing. I feel like I should just close this and come back to it later with fresh eyes. Creativity shouldn’t be forced. Shouldn’t. Sometimes it has to be. Deadlines are a real thing.

I just ignored this for three days. One of those days was a Saturday, and I basically slept through it. Productivity: you’re doing it wrong.

It’s a Monday, and I’m pining for Hawai’i, not gonna lie. I’m missing the weather and the food and the relaxed pace of life. You’d think, for all I’ve been staving off finishing this post because my brain is stalwartly refusing to churn out anything useful in the ‘interesting things for people to read’ department, that I was already indulging in the aloha mindset, but you’d be mistaken. The creative wasteland gives me the willies. That barren landscape freaks me out. Logic dictates that it’s only temporary, but my little Shoulder Devil keeps saying, “What if it isn’t, though? What if this is it? What if you’ve squeezed the last drops of your imaginative self out over the last year-and-a-bit with all this writing you’re suddenly doing and you’ve ruined it for yourself forever?”

Well, that was a cheerful line of thinking.

I still owe you another ~300 words on this thing. Not gonna lie, that may not happen. My brain is empty. Even the cobwebs have already been put to use. It’s a giant echo chamber of nothingness.



That. That’s what’s happening right now. Endless screaming and echoing and nothing-coming-of-it-ing.

Let’s try the Choose Your Own Adventure tactic. Pick an option, read the corresponding result.

You’re an evenings-and-weekends writer trying to squeeze out a blog post by your self-imposed deadline, but you’re completely stuck. Writer’s Block has you in its gnarled, scaly grasp, and you’re fighting tooth and nail to escape. There are three options open to you:

1. You succumb to the beast.
2. You resort to reporting the ingredients in your morning smoothie as a way to meet your word count and just get the heck done.
3. You attempt a reader-decided scenario, possibly to mixed results.

Have you chosen? Very well. Your endings are below:

1. ::cricket noises:: Maybe come back next week?
2. Tuesday’s smoothie consisted of: bananas, peaches, cherries, kale, yogurt, and milk I was trying to get rid of before it went off. It wasn’t very good--too heavy on the dairy.
3. Your readers, if they’ve stuck with you this far and not written you off as a head case, have elected to indulge your attempt at making your post into something marginally entertaining and are behind you all the way in your bid to slay the creativity-sucking monster currently in residence in your brainbox. The battle is fierce, the casualties many, but the whole thing ends in a draw and then everyone sits around sharing a bag of Cheetos and lamenting the ten minutes of life they lost trying to read your lousy blog post because even though they like you, your pathetic attempt at eight hundred words this week was just that--pathetic.