Writing about Writer's Block is the Last Refuge of the Truly Desperate

What can I say?

Ain’t that the question!

I want to talk about Writer's Block, which I'm currently fighting with the help of heating pads and lots of liquids. And time.

It's a creative flu, and it will pass. Writer’s Block always does. But that's not to say there aren't cures.

I'll share one with you in a second. First, I want to share my favorite writer's block story. It's about Theodore Sturgeon and Joe McCarthy.

It's 1953, and the junior senator from Wisconsin is wreaking havoc from his creaky, stinky, over-pressed chair at the head of the Senate Committee on Government Operations. At the same time, writer Theodore Sturgeon (read him, don't Wiki him) is in the midst of one of his legendary bouts with the dreaded disease.

In a fit of desperation, Sturgeon calls his editor, the equally great Horace Gold.

"What's the problem?" says Gold.

"I'm frozen," Sturgeon says. "I mean, I want to write a story about Joe McCarthy and I can't."

"I see," says Gold.

Now, put on your chronoshields, people, we're about to fast-forward through time.

Hold on...

((sound of screaming))

((on your left, the brawling Spanish stairs and so forth, ahem))

((bet you didn’t know years smell like burning caterpillars when you brush past them))

And we’ve arrived.

1976.

Pretty cool, right?

Jimmy Carter is headed toward the White House, about to do his best Cracker Mister Rogers Runs the Church Bake Sale impression. The number one song is 'Silly Love Songs', by Paul McCartney. (Not even half over and the decade is already pure poison.) And Francis Ford Coppola is in the jungle, trying to make Apocalypse Now.

"My greatest fear," Coppola says in an interview, "is to make a real shitty, embarrassing, pompous film on an important subject."

Hold on, we're going back. Watch out for Jimi's flaming guitar...

Okay. 1953 again.

Theodore Sturgeon can't put food on the table. The thing is, he's so distraught about the loathsome sow Joe McCarthy that he feels that anything he writes will fall short of his true feelings about the senator. And so, he’s frozen.

Most writers come to know this feeling at some point in their lives. It's a cousin to another feeling, that which one experiences when one needs to make a serious, transformative change to one's life but lacks the skills to make it happen. It's a sickening, sinking dread.

A feeling of being frozen. Or, blocked.

"Here's what you do," says Gold. "When we get off the phone, I want you to write me a story about a guy who goes to the train station to pick up his wife. The train pulls up. He's jittery with anticipation. The train comes to a halt and there's the steam and final rattle of pistons and so forth. The doors open and there she is, looking radiant, a beaming smile on her face. Our hero starts toward her, ready to take her in his arms. Then he realizes that the smile on her face is for another man, who walks up to her and gives her flowers, and she throws her arms around him.

"Write me this story," says Gold, "and by the time you're finished, everyone in the world will know how you feel about Joe McCarthy."

Sturgeon hangs up the phone and writes the story. Not that one. He writes a story called "Mr. Costello, Hero", which tells the tale of a power-mad manipulator aboard a trans-galactic spaceship. Mr. Costello is Joe McCarthy as we know him, as Sturgeon knew him, only it took a bit of psychological jarring to whack the image out of his head and onto paper.

We could all use a Horace Gold in our lives.

Writer's Block is the paradox of depleted dopamine in the dopamine-rich environment of creation. I ought to be surfing clouds. Instead, I'm hallucinating an ailment.

Really, my subconscious doesn't want to play with me. And that's fine. The real downside is that it forces me to do things like write about not wanting to write, which is the last refuge of the truly desperate.

I said I was going to share a cure. Here it is. You're reading it.

Write the next thing. Anything. That's the cure. Yes, write about not being able to write. You'll come up with something. Yes, it will stink like a leprous leg, but you need to do it. Because. Because writing. Like, you need to get up tomorrow morning and those pants need to be ironed and the cat box is full, right? Like that.

So there.

As for me, the muse will return home soon. As a matter of fact, I think I hear her hairy hand at the door now...

Agony Rats returns on Friday.

Next Sunday I will write something... anything.

Sorry for the delays. You know, Joe McCarthy and all.

Fidelis Eternis,

Paul