Six on the brain #9

1. I’ve been thinking recently about this silly notion called “writer’s block.” I call it silly because I really don’t know what it is.

   Don’t get me wrong: there have been times—extended periods, really—when I didn’t write a thing other than e-mails. I may have attributed that drought to writer’s block, but the simple truth of the matter is that it was a missing routine enforced by lacking self–discipline.

   I recently read a forum somewhere—I wish I could find the link—a discussion about the very same topic. A small discussion was brewing about it, with most people firmly believing that such a thing exists.

   As I read, the thing that jumped out at me was that most of the people who claimed writer’s block to be real tended to view themselves as artists and not writers.

   Please forgive me here because I don’t mean to sound unkind when I say that that’s a load of horseshit.

   I don’t disagree that the written word cannot be art. I’ve read plenty of things that have triggered emotional responses within me that were powerful beyond compare. If those things weren’t art, then I don’t know what is.

   I think it’s a load of horseshit because, as a working writer, I don’t have the luxury of this thing called writer’s block. My job is writing… so I do the job. I cannot toil over every word or sentence, or wait for my muse to appear, before I commit it to paper. If I did, I wouldn’t have a job for very long.

   I’m curious what you think about writer’s block. Am I on the right track? Or am I dead wrong?

2. Did anyone else watch Dubya sign autographs like a rock star after the State of the Union address last night? I had no idea stuff like that happens to presidents.

3. How’s this for stupid? I walked to gym yesterday and managed to strip down to my skivvies before realizing I’d forgotten my shoes when I left the house.

4. I’ve been caffeine-free now for eight days. That wasn’t by design. When I got sick last week, there was no way, now how I could keep anything down. As a result, I stopped drinking coffee and diet colas. I got “lucky”… I bypassed the buzz withdrawal headaches because I was asleep most of the time.

   When I returned to wellness, I decided to see how long I can keep it up.

   I also decided to cut back on the amount of diet soda I drink. It used to be that I’d have anywhere between four and seventy-three Diet Cokes a day. Okay, maybe not seventy-three, but it was a lot: four to six cans at work, plus an unspecified amount from a 2-liter when I got home.

   There were days when I was cracking open my fourth of the day before noon. As I write this, it’s quarter of one in the afternoon and I’m just now having a second Sprite Zero.

   Good on me.

5. Great to see I’m making my personal deadlines.

6. Opportunities are never perfect. You just have to be ready for them. ~Tiki Barber

Tags: caffeine, diet_coke, dubya, On writers, On writing, rock_star, Six on the brain, state-of-the-union-address, tiki_barber, writers-block

Tagged as: caffeine, diet_coke, dubya, On writers, On writing, rock_star, Six on the brain, state-of-the-union-address, tiki_barber, writers-block