Brain Barriers

Q. What do you call a neighborhood full of distracted novelists?

A. Writer's block.

I get writer’s block now and again. Everything has been going along swimmingly, when I find myself returning to the keyboard after a break or an interruption only to discover that my creativity has disappeared.

Sometimes, I gather together all my notes and research, move it out of sight and play solitaire, numbing my mind until my old friend Creativity returns.

I had a friend who was in the middle of a book when writer’s block hit. Nothing worked. Finally, she called me, booked me on a flight to Florida, picked me up at the airport, apologized that she had something she had to do, gave me an envelope filled with cash and dropped me off at the Epcot Center, where I spent the rest of the day wandering around.

For the next couple of days, we talked. Not about her book necessarily. We just talked. One evening her husband took us out to dinner, and I tried grouper. Anyway, at some point, for some reason, her inner writer suddenly came to life.

(I remember this instance because I'd had surgery the day she called, and I somehow managed to walk around Epcot all the next day without bleeding out.)