Writer's Block

Okay, so I'm failing at this already. Like, four days in and I can't think of anything to write. But I guess that was the challenge, right? I mean I want to push myself, to improve, to be able to have a period of three hundred and sixty five days over which retrospectively show me how I have grown and - hopefully - improved as a writer. That's hardly going to happen if on my sixth post I just blather on about how uninspired I'm feeling, is it?

And so we push on.

Writer's block affects us all from time to time. I always struggle with the term writer's block. Being, as I am, a huge grammar geek, I wonder about the apostrophe. It bothers me a lot; haunts me in my dreams (no, really....) Surely writer's block afflicts all writers technically rendering it writers' block. Although, however, when one is using the phrase, one is generally referring solely to oneself, which would again shift that little trickster of the punctuation world one space back to the left: writer's block. Hmm. Maybe it doesn't really matter, but these are the kind of things that bother me. I blame text messaging and the Internet - but that's a whole new blog for a whole new day! (Yes! I think I just inspired myself!)

As I'm referring to myself, I guess I'll punctuate it as in one singular writer suffering from the affliction. If you'd care to correct me on this one, or have any idea as to clearing up this confusion, please do not hesitate to contact me. I lose sleep over contexts where I'm not one hundred percent clear on the apostrophe. True story.

And so to writer's block. What I always wonder is, what precisely is this 'block' that I keep hearing so much about. What sort of substance can wedge itself so deeply into the cognitive recesses of the world's most imaginative and creative individuals and stop them in dead their tracks. It's like the worst game of musical statues ever, stuck in a limbo between your imagination and reality and not quite able to access either... due to this ridiculous 'block'.

I guess I kind of imagine it like a breeze-block; reinforced concrete, seemingly impenetrable... although one day you will inevitably manage to chip pieces and pieces of it away with some sort of pneumatic drill powered by fantasy, uncovering bit after bit of an idea, like a jigsaw puzzle in reverse until you have a tangible piece of language with which you can work. That's my writer's block... but what's yours? And how do you beat it?

Maybe it's a block of cheese and you're a mouse that munches and chomps your way through; maybe you greedily feast on too much and regurgitate letters that subsequently form words, sentences and paragraphs. Ideas. Maybe you face a block of wood, and you're a karate master - a sensei - cracking the balsa with your bare hands, sending uninspired feeling splintering off in all directions, evil spelks and shards scattered everywhere, lying dormant, defeated. You may feel as though you're atop a high rise tower block, standing precariously close to the edge, daring yourself to jump but unable to find the courage. Take the leap, branch out and send yourself in a new direction. Feel the air whipping up against your face as you free fall though a never-ending vortex of language. It's one of the most liberating experiences ever, and it's available to you every time you open a book. Literary sky-diving. Extreme writing. Whatever you want to call it! Maybe you're trapped in a really awful Hollywood blockbuster, with no real plot, poor dialogue and Will Ferrell cast as the lead. *Shudder*. You know that the quality of what you're producing is abysmal, but you feel uninspired by your contemporaries. Every generation, literary or otherwise, needs its saviours. If you can't find one, be one. It really is as simple as that.

Have you ever gotten to the point where you repeat a word so much, or consider a word over and over in your head so many times that it begins to lose all meaning? Block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block, block.

Block.

Once I forgot how to pronounce London, as I was shelving book after book about the capital city in the Travel section where I work. I sat and pronounced it over and over, shifting the stress back and forth from syllable to syllable, my own phonetic game of pong. The word lost all meaning, despite being one of the most recognisable words in the English language. Repetition breeds redundancy (and I'm not just talking about semantics here!) I've been talking about writer's block for so long that the phrase itself has begun to lose all meaning. Like Vienna to Ultravox, it means nothing to me... and therefore I feel blindly optimistic that I shall beat it tomorrow, the next day and every single time.

I just really wish I was clearer on that apostrophe.