To Writer’s Block

You’re always so fresh upon delivery, smelling of cedar or marble or newly hardened concrete.

 

You arrive unordered through whatever secret free delivery service only exists for writers. You are especially good for writers with a deadline.

Suddenly, we don’t have any tools. Normally, we could just bang it out, one word or one letter at a time. We hope they connect, but if not, it matters little; we are just writing.

And then we have this block. It takes over the whole living room or bedroom, whatever room we do our work in. We go for our coffee and come back and bam! there it is, wedged right up against our desk. We can’t move the chair; we can’t even see the chair.

Some writers I know sing to it; they take out their acoustic guitars and pluck away all afternoon. Some ignore it. Some, in an Annie-Hall-kind-of-Woody-Allen way, try to talk their way through it, wringing their hands and pacing saying, “I don’t know, if I could only…” Others just try to bust through it, bare handed, ripping and tearing at it. You see them at the grocery store right before dinner.

“Hey man, how you doing?”

“Writer’s block. It’s awful”

The uncombed hair, the shirt buttoned one button off. Someone might think they drank a lot the night before or broke away from a fight just before the punches hit the face. But every writer knows the look.

It’s a luxury we can’t afford. A day wasted we don’t have. It’s a song we never learned. An argument we never had. A tango we can’t dance. A dog we can’t train. A punishment we can neither inflict nor endure.

It’s a name we don’t know.

It’s a day we remember but never lived.

Write that.