As Long As I Can Pee I Will Never Suffer From Writer’s Block

You are about to be immunized from writer’s block.

Now uh, the first thing I need to do is put my hands in your pockets…

I’ve seen other writers writing about writer’s block and I remember thinking even then, FOR GOD SAKES, THESE PEOPLE ARE WRITING!

That’s four “writers” in one sentence and the phrase is exactly the way I first typed it as the idea slipped from my noggin to my hands and into the keyboard.

If I Could Whiz Through My Bum

My 65 year old neighbor recently told me of his nightmarish experience with an enlarged prostate and being unable to urinate for what seemed like years.

In sheer agony from the need to empty his bladder he finally forced some nurses in our over-worked medical system to push something through his penis while he laid on a table in the waiting room. He said would have gladly peed out his rectum or an eye if he could have. He just needed the stuff OUT.

Writing can be like that, too.

Thoughts get jumbled up and tumbled up and pretty soon they start acting like a plug in your idea pipe. And stoppages need to be ground up and out, a little bit at a time.

Here is how I keep my p’s and q’s flowing:

1. Never, ever criticize or judge an idea! Do you want the plumber analyzing your crap while unplugging the sewer? Ideas have zero defense and will tell their friends to avoid your neighborhood if you don’t treat each one with respect. Remember, ideas have a life of their own and soon grow and spread.
2. Keep your idea pipe clean – I’ve been writing this blog for about six months now and have published 77 posts. I have another 250 or so drafts of ideas in various stages. Some I will use, some used me. Whatever. The point is to keep your idea highway free of parked cars because some day there is gonna be fog and a pile up.
3. Before pondering your results, check your effort level – practice counts in writing, too. Be thankful we don’t have to kill a bunch of trees or hemp just to house our stupid ideas. Even though they might be stored for eons on some remote hard drive and never seen, every word we record puts us one word closer to our perfectly described thought.
4. A wrench can be a hammer – watch any kid assembling blocks and you’ll notice that they start with a thought and whatever is nearby. Then they add to it. Writing needs to be the same way and in the age of computers its pretty easy to improve the past.
   

Writer’s block has the full force of the placebo effect behind it and that is why it is such a formidable foe. But as we have just discussed, the cure for this ill is the same for most others.

Keep a clean idea pipe and everything else will fall into place.

Well, fall in or fall off.

Thank you, friend.

Barry out.