Apparently, I always equated writer’s block with fear of facing a blank page, so I thought I was immune to the malady that afflicts many writers. After all, I have more ideas jotted down in my notebook than I will ever be able to write about, and I generally look forward to the blank page. But the last few days I have encountered real blocks to my writing, which stopped me in my tracks as effectively as a line of stalled cars on the Interstate, with no exit in sight.

The first block was at least somewhat familiar–more a detour than a block, I thought. We had overbooked our weekend, as we often do, so I knew I would have difficulty meeting my challenge to myself of writing every day. But I still thought I could do it, and I believed the extra activities would give me new things to write about, even though the time to write would be severely limited.

The next block was a physical limitation that I had not experienced before to this extent. After a week of cutting and pasting literally hundreds of files at work for a special project we were working on, which is too boring to even talk about, my wrist and index finger became so sore that I could hardly use the keyboard. I tried typing with an ice pack velcroed around my wrist, but that wasn’t very satisfactory.

Next, my built-in mouse on the Netbook I like to write on went haywire. At first, it seemed as though the buttons somehow got switched; then they would hardly work at all. I couldn’t click to open files or browse to my blog or do anything, without extreme aggravation and pain. Eventually I was able to get into the control panel and find out that the buttons were not, in fact, switched. So I got disgusted and went to bed early. The next day the buttons started working again, just for spite.

And now, I’m facing the most difficult block of all–that inner voice that says, in a sneering tone, “Well, well, looks like you might as well give up now. You missed writing for three whole days, so you lose. I knew you couldn’t write every single day!”

But I say to all of these clever blocks, “You’ll have to try harder than that! Get out of my way.  I’m coming through.”