An open letter to Writer’s Block

Dear Writer’s Block,

Thanks to you, it’s taken me almost ten minutes to write this sentence. You’re the gag gift that comes with every blank page. The side of half-baked brussel sprouts with every meal.

You are more persistently irritating than a grain of sand nailed to the eyeball. You are a plague to writers around the world. You poison our creative wells with anxiety and depression to make sure we still suffer even when you’ve moved on to your next victim.

We cannot find peace even when you grow bored with us. For when you leave, we know you’ll come back. You always do. When we least expect it. When we most need you to leave us alone and let us work.

You, dear Writer’s Block, defy all reason and logic. Many, even fellow writers, simply don’t believe in you.

“But…I do this for a living!” we wail as sweat and tears stream down our red-cheeked faces. “But…you do this for a living,” others point out as sweat and tears stream down our red-cheeked faces.

We crawl beneath our desks and curl up into fetal positions like defeated Omega animals submitting to a snarling, snapping Alpha.

To make matters worse, we rarely find empathy and compassion among our own kind. Fellow writers accuse us, the afflicted, of being melodramatic; the walking embodiments of a stereotype that they and their ancestors have been fighting to eradicate for centuries. Instead of finding shoulders to cry on (because our own shirtfronts have grown sodden with our own tears), we are spurned. Cast out into the blinding daylight or the inky night to find our own way out of the pit of despair in which you have us trapped.

Our eyes grow nearly as wild as our unkempt hair. Our clothes go grey with neglect. Our frames grow gaunt. Where we were once articulate, our speech becomes less coherent with each froth-mouthed moan.

At the peak of our descent into madness, half of our inflicted ranks join free-roaming packs of wolves that run wild through the mountains. Their wails blend into the serenade of howls like a patchwork quilt. The rest of us dig burrows in the bottom of the nearest basement to hibernate until you move on and we can bound forth in carefree creativity once more.

In short, Writer’s Block, you’re a big fat jerkface.

But you do not get to have the last word.

Despite your best efforts, we rise to write again. We will keep coming back to the blank page. We are made of letters and words and are thus unable to turn our backs to our true passion of putting pen to paper and finger to keyboard to weave our verses and tell our stories. If not for our audience, for us. Because we need to. Because if we don’t, we will sink into a deeper despair than that you ever inflict.

And the deeper the despair you thrust upon us, the more we will fight you.

Because that’s your weakness. Oh yes, you visit us time and time again, but that means we know you’ll leave. And even if we can’t fight our way out of the aforementioned pit, we know that really, if all else fails, we just have to wait you out.

And we can be wonderfully patient.