Please read this...Overcoming a case of writer's block

<p class="p1">Some folks may have checked out this space during the last couple of weeks and figured that the wordsmith was getting, well, lazy. And, in a sense, they would be right. Well, sort of. </p><p class="p1">Lazy might not be the right word. Somewhere in the English language, there's probably a word, or words, or a turn of words, which describes the condition which afflicts those of us of who attempt to craft words for a living and reach a bit of a stumbling block.</p><p class="p1">Writer's block? Nah. Not so much. To be honest with you, there are thousands of words waiting to come out. On some days, it's just harder than others to find the right way to use the words.</p><p class="p1">Maybe part of the challenge is that yours truly has been working with words for a long time. Make that a long, long time. Approximately two score worth of years. Maybe, I've just run out of ways to use words.</p><p class="p1">While pondering the situation, I decided to do a little bit of online research into this writer's block thing. When doing such research, the first step is to find the right words regarding whatever one is seeking. </p><p class="p1">So, I tried: "Describing writer's block." Google, as always, was helpful. I was a bit surprised that there were only 398,000 results that had been posted. </p><p class="p1">I got a little bit frustrated after looking at the first 134,679 results, but there was some helpful information.</p><p class="p1">One gem was written by a nice British lady who suggested that there was no finer representation of "the brain-fog known as writer's block" than some character in a book, which I'd never heard of, written by an author, whom I'd never heard of. The book was supposed to have been critically acclaimed, which meant that it was boring and only sold four copies.</p><p class="p1">The nice British lady suggested that a symptom of writer's block is fear of failure, which, in turn, "can leave a desert so vast and arid that you can't see anything but the graveyard of your literary ambition." Sorry, folks. I don't really have any "literary ambition." I just want to make sure that you have something to look at every week.</p><p class="p1">I am not going to mention the name of the aforementioned nice British lady. She probably has a whole army of British lawyers who are still looking to get even for what happened back in 1776.</p><p class="p1">Another website I visited actually recounted the history of writer's block, which was described as "a well-documented phenomenon throughout the history of writing." </p><p class="p1">Edgar Allan Poe supposedly had a case of writer's block all the way back in 1846, which was about the time that I started writing for a living. Give or take a few years. Mr. Poe did not know that he had writer's block, because the term was not coined until 1947. By then, Mr. Poe had been life challenged for quite some time, in that he was dead. Therefore, writer's block was not a problem. </p><p class="p1">My final stop was at the website for Writer's Digest, which is a resource for, um, well, writers. The website featured an article which was headlined: "10 Creative Ways to Beat Writer's Block Fast." At that point, 10 things were more than I cared about. So, I just looked at a couple of the recommendations.</p><p class="p1">The article suggested that being a writer means the possibility of being vulnerable to such things as ridicule. Really. "Rest assured that there will be multitudes who want to throw rotten tomatoes at you," the article shared. I can only hope that they throw cucumbers, green onions and a couple of jalapeno peppers, too. That way, I could be ridiculed and have a salad, too.</p><p class="p1">The article further suggested that a writer write "a fantasy story as if you were writing a factual news story." </p><p class="p1">Great idea. Let's see. Let's do one about a magical kingdom somewhere out in the middle of corn fields, a place where men are men, and women, well, they just chuckle at the men. The men run their kingdom in somewhat of a silly fashion, which keeps the women chuckling. Some of the men do really dumb things, especially with money. Some of those dumb things are illegal, and the men get caught. The women chuckle some more. And shake their heads. Wait a minute. This isn't fantasy. This is Illinois. It's like "Game of Thrones." Without the bodies. Well, we don't know about any bodies. </p><p class="p1">Whew. I'm taking a deep breath. I think my writer's block has been cured. Aren't you glad.</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p2"> </p>