I’ve had writer’s block the last few days. There are all sorts of creative exercises people can recommend to get over it, and some people apply some tough love and tell you to quit dinking around with fancy-dancy little creative exercises and just sit down and write. Write anything, write crap, “write twaddle,” but write.

A very popular contemporary author said as much. He was in town for a book signing (for a while, you could not keep him out of town or abate his book signings) and he gave me grim advice. I asked him how one gets over writer’s block and he said, “Take up plumbing.” He paused and I considered the Zen-like riddle of what must have been some level of sagacity beyond my comprehension. What did he mean by plumbing? Would a change of lifestyle improve my perspective? “Or carpentry,” he added. I wondered if there was something energizing about working with your hands. “Or anything. Pick up some other profession, because writers write.”

Oh. He was bitching me out. If I couldn’t write, I couldn’t sit at the cool kids’ table.

That doesn’t help me now. My eyes are burning with dryness, I’m well abreast of world news as I scan Google News and Al Jazeera, I’m about to fix yet another drink, and nothing’s compelling me to launch into a creative exploit. I’m kinda hoping that complaining about it (on a blog nobody reads) will help me through this, but there’s no reason it should produce a miracle. But at least I wrote about it.