Writers block traffic

Apparently, I suffer from some kind of an early winter blues. That’s not very unusual around here, and I am sure there are physiological reasons for that. The lack of sunlight, the lack of warmth, and then, at the other end of the spectrum, the lack of the cold, too, the cold that would make it a real winter, and give us snow which would make everything a little lighter again.

Trade?

Tomorrow, on November 24, the sun will rise at 8:06 in the morning, and set at 3:04, giving us six hours, 58 minutes and 15 seconds of daylight.

And even daylight is a relative term with the clouds hanging so low that when I drive J and the kids to the subway station, we can’t see the top of a 15-floor building. Those sunglasses can gather dust for another few months.

What’s worse, the days keep getting shorter for another month or so, by another hour. On December 21st, the shortest day of 2009, the sun will rise at 8:44 and set at .. 2:48 pm, still making it a good six-hour day with sunlight. To be exact – and nothing builds trust like being exact – the day will be six hours, three minutes, and 42 seconds long.

The good news is that the sun will rise. And with the sun, our, or my spirits that right now mostly resemble a flat balloon, left over from Son’s birthday party last Sunday.

Or, and this might even be worse, I suffer from a writer’s block. Nothing seems funny enough, nothing seems important enough for me to write about. Even if I can put together a skeleton of a story, I can’t fill it, I can’t breathe life into it, and make it go to places I never even imagined it would go to. So, instead, I make up errands for me to run. I can only check my email, and ‘like’ other people’s funny status updates – things that are so funny that I can’t even make a comment that could stand up next to it – on Facebook so often. The other day, I spent a good twenty minutes looking for a paperclip to attach my business card to a Rolling Stone clipping I was going to send to a friend of mine.

I know that the only way out of this is through. (I learned that from Jack Falla’s wonderful “Open Ice”). I just have to keep on writing and then one day, I will like what I’ve got on the page. That’s what all the great screenwriters always say on this great podcast I listen to. If they admit to getting a writer’s block, they say that they need to switch gears, work on another project, and then come back, but never ever stop writing.

Today, I got an email from Son’s godfather, a writer, marketer, Deadhead, and a coach, and I replied and told him that I was in a “creative slump.”

His lightning-quick advice to me was to “try writing a blog post with these words in it: skeleton, balloon, paperclip, and sunglasses.”

I might try that.

2 thoughts on “Writers block traffic

  1. It reminds me of a trip to Newfoundland. Not sure if becoming an honorary Newfoundlander is the same as being proselytized, but do you know how that’s done? You have to kiss a halibut. No, sorry, a cod. Kiss a cod. And I did. Of all the Canadian trade commissioners attending the trade show, I was the only one to kiss that halibut. No, it was a cod. And then you flush it down with screetch, some weird sort of rum, or leftover rum. So, kiss a halibut, no, a cod, kiss a cod, on the non-existing lips, and then take a sip of screetch. Mazel tov to that!

    Except for one thing. The taste in your mouth the next morning? One word: magma.

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