Writer's Block: a generic, self-destructive ramble

According to artistic law, every writer must have writers block and every writer must use this writer’s block as a topic for a column or a blog or perhaps a chapter in a book. Unfortunately, only fellow writers find this stuff interesting. Readers instantly switch-off, because they don’t care about the days when you couldn’t write, they’re only interested in the days when you could. Nevertheless I’m going to write about it and bore you all silly with my ramblings.

I have a very specific type of writer’s block, namely that I can never write what I’m supposed to be writing, even if it’s something that I chose myself. My poetry flourishes when an essay is due or a blog post needs to be written. I’ve been staring at the blank lines between my year abroad assignments, eating my way through the pantry, yet still jotting down screenplays and articles as though my only purpose in life were to produce black and white typed words.

This afternoon I left a social engagement early to come home and continue on my assignments. After prancing around my room to the Follies, eating my way through yesterday’s BBQ leftoevers, skyping my boyfriend and one failed Sex and the City download, I’m sat here at my desk writing. Except, I’m not writing what I’m supposed to be writing. Before I started this little prose ditty, I completed a chapter of a book I’ve been planning in my head on the S-bahn whilst commuting to and from work. It’s probably terrible, but that’s not the point. I wrote something, I wrote 800 words of something. 800 words 

There are articles that I should have written by now, important things that I’ve been delaying and struggling to compose. All of these articles are on topics that I have suggested or previously written about. What’s more, these articles aren’t just for my own little blog or a student newspaper, but for real-life, real-world, big-grown-up publications. Thankfully my contacts are friendly and there appears to be no obvious deadlines. Still there is no excuse. There is no excuse because I don’t really have writer’s block: I am not blocked from writing, only diverted. I fear that this predicament has and will ruin any writing career I hope to pursue. My work will just have to be random, ad-hoc and spontaenous, in which case no one will want to hire me. 

I guess it’s back to the drawing board. Hopefully someone will just let me be in musicals for the rest of my life and I can give up the idea of being a free-lance journalist. Unfortunately, that too is just as competive and untangible. Saying that, no one has ever heard of singing block, but maybe that’s just called tonsilitis. 


It’s after 1am, I’m hungry and sipping a glass of wine. It all sounds like a marvelous setting in which to write productively. However, as you can see, I haven’t managed to produce anything worth reading. It’s all just a string of useless, procrastinating thoughts that my energetic brain decided to compose rather than focusing on a project that could be ticked off the to-do list. I wonder: are all writers this self-destructive?

1 comment :

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