Tue, April 15, 2003

It hasn't always been easy for me (or pretty for you), but I've worked hard to send at least one new column out each day. It's only been ten days and already I'm writing about writer's block.

For a while there, I coasted on a surplus that I'd accumulated over two nights of furious writing/blogging/ranting – whatever you'd call it. After that, I managed to throw a few things together right before the deadline. Now, I'm just stuck.

Which is not to say I'm out of ideas. I want to write about actors I hate. I have movies and TV shows I will be reviewing. There's a list of other ideas I've been maintaining, including an exploration of why local news channels always display their numbers in the same typeface and an account of an extremely miserable experience at a parking garage that was not my fault. I even have articles that I've started on this site as reminders to myself to finish later. One of which, inexplicably, contains only "Kelsey Grammer, Neal McDonough, and David Hyde Pierce." (I can't wait to see where that one goes.)

But none of these ready-made ideas are speaking to me right now. So instead I'll write about that. I have opinions about plenty of things every day. All that's required is to dash off a few paragraphs on one of them, with some modicum of wit. The less preparation, the better. Arggh. Now I know how my friends who actually call themselves writers must feel. What a drag!

Spontaneity is the key. These things come off better when I just sit down and throw them together in under 30 minutes. Yet tonight, I spent at least that long just searching news sites to see if anything out there was worthy of a frothing rant. (Nope. I couldn't even come up with anything cute to say about the upcoming girl-on-girl kiss on All My Children, except that I certainly canceled my Cinemax subscription at just the right time.) What really worries me is that maybe I'll have to call in sick tomorrow to devote full-time to coming up with something to write about. (There's nothing worse than writing about writer's block, except writing about it twice in a row.)

I have ideas for the too-long-overlooked Bionicle Fan Fiction section of this site, but those pieces take much longer to nurse into being, because they actually have to be well-written. What value they offer in terms of not being my opinion about things is balanced by how hard they are to generate.

And, considering that I've now run out of things to say about having run out of things to say, I'll sign off and devote the next 24 hours to coming up with something truly spectacular.

(Oh, how I'll regret closing with that!)

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