Block

You can’t be reading this, mostly because there’s no way I can be writing it. I have all the symptoms of writer’s block these last three weeks. It’s a common writing problem or maybe just an excuse. Whatever it is, the block is well known. There is too much already said about it, but I’m adding this to that execrable pile. Don’t worry about it though because I’m blocked so I can’t possibly be writing this. 

I have still been writing but none of it has been fit to see the light of day. I wouldn’t force it on anyone. That’s not modesty. The pages are tripe. Still, I’ve kept writing several thousand words a day but like the matter Hamlet read, they are just words, words, words or Macbeth’s tale told by an idiot. I keep going, in part because I don’t know what else to do. 

The other part is my history of writing out of these blocks. Typing and pushing a pen gets me through the anxiety that stifles my writing, keeps me from accepting ideas and following where they lead. Anxiety focuses me on myself to the exclusion of an audience.

I get stuck on all I can’t write, worry no one will want to hear, and imagine what people think of me. This gets in the way of speaking to others, the whole point of writing. I keep writing myself back from anxiety until I let it go and forget myself long enough to be of use to others. 

The last three weeks’ writing has been thoughts, worries, and fears. I’ve had my doubts about continuing with it, but it gets things out of my system. I write until I’m tired of my anxious self and regular writing slowly resumes. All those pages of self-centered lead me back. 

There is no cure for writer’s block and anxiety, but there is treatment. My prescription, put simply is to write on and on. That fixes most everything.