Two cures for Writer's Block

Whenever I find myself sitting in front of the computer with a dumb look on my face (okay, dumber than usual) for several minutes, there aren’t many things that snap me out of it and prod me back into the writing. This morning, October 23rd, I believe I’ve found two such cures for the torpor that’s otherwise known as writer’s block. The first cure for changing my mood was a non-prescription dose of changing weather. “Is it raining?” my sweet wife said, as she lay half-awake in her nest of the bed. “No, it’s not rain,” I said. “Generally speaking, rain isn’t white.” (I hear the wife groan like that on occasion, a response she picked up when we left Hawaii). Changing weather will do it, erase the blockage that is. Why am I surprised that on the twenty-third day of October there should be snow on the ground? Its presence has the effect of changing my mood, of giving me an odd kind of hope that we’re not stuck in some kind of national block, that instead of staring into our collective TV screens with looks of disbelief at the shenanigans going on around us, that things do change, even if the change comes along in the form of chilly weather.

The second block-buster if you will is featured above. I discovered this wine at a market close by, and had to have it. Many writers un-block themselves with a liquid diet, of course. I don’t take such drastic measures, but the bottle now occupies a spot near my computer just in case. I was careful to leave the opener downstairs, that way, if worse comes to worst and I simply can’t start the flow again (of words that is, relax), I imagine that by the time I get to the kitchen for the opener I’ll have forgotten what it is I wanted.