allergies
Even though I sometimes get hay fever, I don't believe in allergies. I think a certain amount of respiratory inflammation is normal. Also, as a waiter, you are constantly dealing with neurotic people who claim to be allergic to the most ridiculous things and then asked for all kinds of substitutions as an accommodation for these phantom ailments. I’m allergic to parsley, so can I please have a steak as a garnish instead? Yes, yes, some people will die if they eat peanuts, but I think actual, for realsies allergies are probably somewhat rare, while neurosis and irrational feelings of persecution are epidemic.I’ve also always had the same innate distrust of the concept of writer’s block. It has always seemed to me that when one makes time to write and actually sits down to do it, it just happens. For the past six months, however, my experience was markedly different. Whenever I sat down to work, I felt terribly restless and unable to concentrate. Even when I cleared a whole day just to write, it was impossible to sit in the chair for the whole time. I would write and rewrite the same sentences. I paced. I diddled with my iPod. I kept wanting to deny that it was writer’s block per se, but as it dragged on (and on and on), I felt my conceptual rejection waning. The feeling of writer’s block for me was something like sleeplessness, a sensation of being simultaneously agitated and exhausted.
I’m not sure if it’s over or not, but this weekend, I started to think that I could sit down again. Weird. I did nothing out of the ordinary, but out of nowhere, I felt a breaker switch flip in my head and had the sudden knowledge that I could sit down and work again, especially if I used a pen instead of a computer. Again, this realization came out of nowhere. The only deviation from my normal routine was that I haven’t been drinking for the last month (an early Lent sacrifice, I guess) and I’d just had a ménage á trois.
Does anyone have clear evidence–anecdotal, clinical, or otherwise–proving the existence of writer’s block? Or is it just a lot of hooey?
posted by chauncey swan @ Wednesday, January 24, 2007
1 Comments:
We just talked about this in the workshop I moderate and people said it was easier to write when they were justifiably angry.
So true, I thought.
The New Yorker did a thing on this. They said writers block didn't enter the lexicon until pretty recently. Like allergies, it could become a real(er) thing once it's a thing everybody talks about.
One time somebody told me to put it all in a Zen place and I had to think about that for a long time before I realized it was just something to say.
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