Is this writer’s block?
When life enters loud and annoying and stubborn and stupid and it
just. won’t. shut. up? When your creativity is interrupted or diminished or lost and you don’t know even where to look to find it again?
Is it writer’s block when you lost your words and stare at the screen only to realize you’ve wasted them all on the space in rooms of your house? When you need to speak only for someone not to listen to you anyway?
Is it writer’s block when you feel like there’s not shit to write about because you have no desire to regurgitate your current state or reality into typed words?
Because you don’t even want to read about all the bullshit, or replay it, or put it out in the world in some pretty wrap-around language for others to read while you’re crying out about how much it just. fucking. sucks. sometimes?
I think it’s writer’s block when you can’t access the part of your brain that wants to write about anything other than the current shitty state of reality you’re actually sitting in... Because you want to write about it, but you don’t. Because you don’t actually want to.
Is it writer’s block still if you’re typing—right now, right this very second—with shaking hands and a lump in your throat? With background noises that sound and feel like chaos when it’s really nothing but the same sound of the same tv of the same show of the same people who sit in the same spots and do the same things?
I think it’s probably writer’s block when you’re sitting, trying to stay in a flow because words… words, they are actually coming out and you have evidence because you’re seeing them appear on the screen…
And then you’re interrupted by the sound, the noise, the person around you because it must look like this has been, or just is, easy for you?
(It’s not.)
It’s writer’s block because they’re asking you, constantly:
“What are you doing?” “Are you writing?” “What are you writing about?”
And you take a deep breath before you respond because your flow was broken, and now you honestly, and actually really don’t know.
Scrap it.
Or, it’s writer’s block when they specifically decide to ask you who you’re writing for:
“The magazine thing?” Hurry, shake your head no… don’t lose the flow…
“The substack thing?” Stop. Nod. Yes.
“…Okay…”
It’s gone.
Writer’s seige.
