I have of late lost all my mirth

Talk to me about writers’ block. You see, I am not sure I understand. I am not sure whether you all know something I don’t know, or whether none of us knows that the others don’t know. What does writer’s block mean to you? I am genuinely curious.

I am accumulating, over my life, many instances in which I make mistakes of assumption. For example, in conversation with a couple of friends recently, I discovered that when they go to bed, they proceed to sleep until morning. I have long assumed that on going to bed, it is the usual way of things for a person to proceed to wake several times over the course of a night, call it a good night’s sleep if it is only thrice, and poor if it is six. Roughly speaking. Similarly, it came to light in a conversation here that for some, a read or written character has a recognisable face that, given sufficient skill, could be painted just as yours or mine could, whereas for me, all faces are blurred out in what, having now examined it in my mind’s eye, transpires to be a rather spooky haze, capable of expressing sentiment without ever coalescing into an identifiable form.

I suspect we are prone as humans - that phase of early adolescence where we become preoccupied with the nature of our own consciousness and the possibility that there exists naught BUT our own consciousness notwithstanding - to assuming common experience based solely on the existence of a descriptive phrase for that experience. That Friday feeling. Monday morning blues. Empty nest syndrome. Toothache. Writer’s block.

So what is writer’s block? For you? For me, I have a narrative that I don’t experience writer’s block (dear lord putting that possessive apostrophe in is proving taxing to me today. Perhaps in a Freudian rejection of the personal possession of such a thing, I keep trying to place it as for a plural ownership that may apply to other writers, but not, of course, to me). If I am bid to put pen to paper, then I shall do so. It is only the bidding which may or may not prove forthcoming. Take today, and indeed the reason for my raising of this question. Today, I am feeling blue. There’s been a bit of a run of stuff on the family front, and it feels like we are limping towards an ever retreating clearing of the trees. I glimpsed daylight yesterday, and promptly put my back out (not figuratively), and now, to be frank, I am grumpy. More than grumpy. I slipped backwards into the ravine and I am inclined to rest a little here and regather my strength but the water just keeps rising if I do. I am sure we have all been here, this ground is well trodden, there is no need to get overdramatic about it.

However, I cannot, today, be said to be feeling motivated. If a chap with a cheque, one of those large TV worthy prize presentation ones, was to turn up on my doorstep, camera crew in tow, and place before me a microphone and the question of what I intend to do now that I am a millionaire, I would answer “bank it and go to bed.” This goodly frame the earth seems to me a sterile promontory right now, as evidently mankind has been feeling on and off for many a century. And I am pretty confident that this IS a shared experience, because we have not just taken a phrase and thrown it about as the sole symbol of a phenomena, we have operationalised it at length.

So to writers block. I have made an assumption that I do not experience it, based on my assumption that a writer suffering from writers block sits, quill (or fountain pen at the least) poised above the parchment, head in hand, incapacitated in in the unstopping of his (always his, but the face remains blurry) customary effluence of words. Or at the least, the page before her (I am, after all, attempting to expand my understanding) is riddled with false starts, crossed through in increasing vexation. Is this how it is for you? Is it an issue of crude performance? Is there an expressive impotence? Or is it the case that you are perfectly capable of calling yourself to attention, you just have no hunger to do so? Is it the loss of libido which is the block?

Today, I am indisputably libidinously challenged. Is this writer’s block? Because here I am, going through the motions so to speak. I can write, I just don't feel particularly interested in doing so. Can I be said to be blocked if the lack is in the passion or pleasure rather than the base performance? So tell me, do you lay claim to bouts of blockage? And if you do, what is that like? Does “writers block” denote broadly the same experience for everyone, or do we each have a different understanding?

In the meantime, I shall return to work after my lunch break, and hope to muster some nobility of reason, or just a soupçon of that infinite faculty with which to face the afternoon. Wish me luck.