The Block Blues

You know you've got it when you're staring at the blinking cursor. Come on! It seems to urge you. Come on, I know you've got something in there! I bet you somewhere inside that blinking thin black vertical line there's a mocking smile tucked away. Bastard. Your fingers are poised over the keyboard, body hunched over expectantly towards the screen, your face looks as cold as ice from the bluish screen glare. You are the Robotic Writer, you imagine. Seriously. Whatever works, alright? Let's not be judgmental here. Okay, so anyway, you're Robotic Writer and Meep! you are going to write, or more precisely type. You imagine the electricity flowing through your whole body charging you up to write only to fizzle out upon hitting your brain. Total meltdown. Which means it's just you and the cursor again. And sometimes you just can't take all this intimidation dammit. I mean all this winking is absolutely distracting. This 'now here, now not here' kind of assistance is infruriating. if you're gonna be a cursor, you just stay there damn you!

Sometimes a media change my help get the creative juices flowing. Writers write, typists type, right? It will be pen and paper for me now. No more of this meancing winking and clickety clackety. So I roll out the best paper I have, maybe some of that fine off white hand made paper from Venice, and then pull out that lovely expensive Mont Blanc fountain pen to write with (if you're going to write the best, you use the best and if you use the best, it'll take care of the rest! How the hell can you argue with such impeccable logic?) Yeah, hey maybe hit the shower, wash off the old negative computer vibe thing and start a fresh with new clothes and a fresh new organic start, just like how the greats used to do it.

Longhand. Just thinking the word sent a shiver down your spine. All those pages handwritten, endless pages. When was the last time you even wrote that much? Never! You have to be mad to do it by pen and paper. You're so computer dependent that you even print your little post it notes out with the printer. (You're the only one in the office that does that, by the way). The most longhand you did was just signing daily documents. You understand of course that you is not me. You is you but me is I. Got that?

Junk that. No, what you need is inspiration. Some good chugging kind of music to get your strumming along the keyboard. You quite like Fort Minor's 'Remember the Name' because of it's urgent violins and cool backbeats. So you turn the song and volume up and then stare expectantly again, fingers poised, ready to receive the inspiration, the vindication, the passion, which you did receive. Except your fingers are tapping the table as if they were drumsticks and the table were a drum. You begin to mouth along the parts you are able to. Then you start head nodding to it. Finger pointing. And then as you close your eyes in musical ecstasy, the cursor keeps staring unwaveringly at you. Bastard.

That's the trouble with inspiration sometimes, it doesn't inspire the right stuff.

Can't help it man, you've got the block blues.

Plink, plinky, plonk, ploink. Ploonk.