Getting stuck on the Internet Highway

I find it somewhat amusing, but mostly intimidating when my wife ends up with the writer’s equivalent of a traffic jam. Of course, I’m talking about writer’s block. She gets so frazzled when she gets stuck because she loves the writing. And she pesters me for things to write about when her ideas are already so much better than mine.

You see I think she’s a gifted writer. By gifted, I mean she can sit down at a keyboard or whip out a pen and quickly put to paper what’s on her mind. Now I don’t by any means consider myself to be a “gifted” writer. Talented? Maybe. But not gifted. What I mean is, I feel confident my writing is clear and fluid, and might possibly be considered creative or even funny. But the stuff just doesn’t pour out of me like water from an artesian spring.

When I write, I invariably face a battle – picture little guys with swords and axes running around in my head. To me, to struggle is to write. I kid that it takes me two hours to write anything. You want me to write a sentence for your Birthday card? Two hours. An epic poem? Two hours. A 20-page complex dissertation on the current geopolitical climate of Asia? Two hours. (Okay maybe something more like 3 hours). Get the picture? It’s a painful process for me just to sit down and start the process. Short, little things take me f-o-r-e-v-e-r to get started. Same thing for long projects.

In contrast, Mopsy just sits down and starts typing away. Next thing I know she’s asking if I read the latest blog entry. “Did you read my blog yet today?” she’ll say.

“Um, yeah. It was about Tommy being a chicken hawk.”

“No. That was yesterday’s. I already wrote two today.”

And that’s nothing. Just ask poor bro-de-mopsy, or pianoliz the most entries they’ve ever been behind.

But the one thing that scares me about Gretchen’s writer’s block. The thing that gives me dread more than sitting in real rush-hour traffic is what if she faces the little guys with swords and axes too? (Maybe instead of little men they’re Amazon women, or diaper wielding children).

If she struggles the way I do then her battles must be a LOT bigger than mine because she usually gets stuck for entire days at a time. And if that’s the case then maybe I’m better than I think I am which means I’m going to have to face those little guys in my head a lot more often…

Then again, they often wear kilts and I don’t think I can stand a regular dose of little guys with kilts carrying swords and axes, and battling it out in my head for two hours at a time—which must be why I spend so much time on the real highway stuck in traffic. Oh well, at least it’s not for two hours at a time.