A Writer's Block

I'm stuck. Bogged down. In the glue. Constipated. I could go on, but
I'm sure you know what I'm talking about.

I'm sat in front of this monitor and my eyes are hurting. I'm irritated
from head to foot. Nothing's coming out. Maybe there's an idea in there
somewhere, a spark of the imagination waiting to light the fuse wire.
Yesterday, all I needed was a split second of inspiration and then I
was away. My fingers were tapping away at my keyboard faster than one
of those machines that transmits Morse code. I'd broken free and
nothing would ever stop me again. Writing was easy. I laughed
complacently at the thought that I'd ever have to stare at that blank
screen again. Reams and reams of pages would flow, forming my prolific
future.

But that was yesterday. Now I'm back to square one. I feel dull and
insipid. Cheated even. There's nothing more frustrating than realising
that it was all an illusion. I've been kidding myself. Making myself
believe that I was a writer. I'm nearly thirty three for fuck's sake. I
write articles about the pharmaceutical industry for a living. In that
sense I'm already a writer. But I don't want to be a writer 'in that
sense'.

What kind of writer do I want to be? I don't want to be a kind of
writer, if you want to know the truth. I don't want to be a great
writer, a famous writer, a respected writer, a rich writer. I want to
be the writer that I am. That's all.

So when I have to go through this rigmarole just to get a few words on
the page, it's?demoralising. I feel like a cricketer who scored a
century yesterday and then went out for a golden duck today. What makes
that analogy even more damning is that I hate cricket. It's even more
boring than sitting staring at this screen, thinking what I could
possibly write.

Writer's block. Who invented that name? I would like to kill them. No
seriously, I would. Whichever smug, self-satisfied self-anointed genius
thought up that expression, I would like to violently and painfully
disembowel them and then stuff my hungry laptop into the space I've
just made. Whoever it was, I bet it was an established writer who
coined the phrase solely to protect their own skins from aspiring
competition. I bet their attitude was like this:

'I've managed to crack this lark and am now enjoying the royalties, the
advances, the fame, the acclaim, the requests for memoirs and
appearances at creative writing seminars and all the rest of it but I
don't like the idea of anyone else sharing what I've worked for. So I
need to construct a very disconcerting and almost unassailable fence
between myself and the opposition. Something that impedes them from the
very moment they get near their quills, fountain pens, typewriters,
word processors, computers. Some kind of psychological obstruction,
that clogs them up, makes them feel unworthy. Something like?Writer's
Block.'

Writer's block. What a crap name. Isn't writing supposed to be a
creative industry? Why not call it something literary? The Great
Insurmountable, anyone? Or something mysterious and frightening? The
Black Void, where many a stray idea has been consumed and never
returned. Something intellectual perhaps? Um, I can't think of anything
to fit that category. But you get my drift. The name is as bleak and
mundane as the experience it is supposed to describe.

I'm going round in circles. You're probably getting bored of this. I
know what you're thinking. You're thinking, why doesn't he stop
dwelling on the problem, clear it out of his mind and just get down to
some writing again? He's not going to do himself any favours by getting
all bitter about it and constructing mythical scapegoats which he can
then blame for his own shortcomings as a writer. The only thing he
needs to conquer is himself. It's all in his mind. He should know
that.

Well, I'll tell you something. I'll be honest. I know that. But knowing
doesn't help. The only thing that helps is the cathartic sound of those
fingers tapping away. But all I can hear now is silence.

My head is on the writer's block.

Again.

Boring isn't it?