Song Of The Day 7/30/2013: Just Jack - "Writer's Block"

I'm in kind of a funk. Well, no, not a funk as in, "I'm wearing my sweatpants 24 hours a day, sucking down Eskimo Pies watching Championship Bowling because I'm afraid to engage the void." Nothing that tawdry. But I'm at some sort of crossroads with the whole writing thing. One sign is that I'm saying things like "crossroads with the whole the writing thing."

I feel like I'm putting a cap on what I can write about. Or more like, how I can write. Something's trapped in there. Or maybe it just got away and is living somewhere else under an assumed name and I don't know how to find it. There's something about the experience that's like pulling teeth. Both my regular teeth and some canine teeth that I don't know how I got. I have lots of writer friends, and I read their work all the time. They're really good at it. They have a casual way of saying very thoughtful, learned phrases that still scan well. I'm like, "Shit yeah, I'd pay that guy to write!" I'm either being too basic and vernacular, or stretching too hard to prove I'm deep. I'm not hitting the middle enough. I'm either using the thesaurus too little or too much, and I feel people can tell when I'm doing either.

I'm not as funny as I used to be. Granted, when I was funny before, that's probably because I had nothing to lose. But I feel deep down inside that in order to uncork whatever it is I think is stuck in there, I'm going to have to do something funny. Lately, though, there hasn't been a lot of funny stuff going on in my head, and by "lately" I mean "the last six years." It's not like there's cruel, medieval violence going on in my head, it's just that there's not a lot of funny things going on there either. Just a bunch of flabby old guys trying to sell Maytags.

Another thing that used to happen is trances. I find it incredibly difficult to get into that mystical zone where everything comes into this empty space where I work from, find a hitch, then ride that sucker out until I've come up with something reasonably creative. I don't go into those trances lately. When I was growing up, of course, I was taught those trances were the work of Satan and some fetid-breathed demons, and if I were to succumb to a trance I'd fall out of favor with God and probably lose a kidney as punishment. So there was that hill to climb first. Once I got over that I'd have at least two trances a month. I've looked into transcendental meditation, but I won't be able to afford to get the proper training for a while. It's like that situation where you can't get a job unless you're currently employed. Or you can't hire a paid escort without references, but somebody has to be your first reference. You've been there, right?

So, that's my issue. The definition of a first world problem. But still a problem. I've been writing a lot, but I'm not feeling I'm doing it right. Hopefully this ends soon before I consign myself to unfulfilling SEO-optimization jobs or, even worse, emulating Hemingway. I can't afford to go to Spain -- would Tacoma suffice? Somebody's gotta own a bull down there.