There are times when I find that when searching for something to write about, my mind (such as it is) often refuses to give up the goods. This surprises me since I’ve always excelled at such worthwhile pursuits as daydreaming and letting my mind wander off on imaginative adventures, usually when I’m supposed to be doing something else. So why the mind blank when I have hours to catch up on my writing. Well let’s see here…
The ever questionable Wikipedia defines writers block as this:
Writer’s block can be closely related to depression and anxiety[citation needed], two mood disorders that reflect environmentally caused or spontaneous changes in the brain’s frontal lobe. This is in contrast to hypergraphia, more closely linked to mania, in which the changes occur primarily in the temporal lobe. These processes, and their implications for treatment, are described in neurologist Alice Flaherty’s book The Midnight Disease.
Hmmm. That’s funny, I don’t feel depressed. Maybe a bit down because one of my disabilities from my time in the service is now making my future uncertain. Well, let’s step back and look at that again:
- Feeling lousy
- Medication for above making me really woozy
- Missing work again
- Can’t even do most household chores
- They changed my GI doctor at the VA so I have to start all over
Alright, I’ll just have to be honest about this. I am feeling down and it’s obviously affecting my ability to come up with my usual outstanding content or perhaps just the word content is a more accurate. So I sat down and decided to just write a post like this one. Seems to have worked somewhat.
But wait…there’s more to this that meets the eye as the above article continues:
However, another interpretation of writer’s block, sometimes confused with scant output, is given in the book Silences, by Tillie Olsen, who argues that historically many women and working-class writers have been unable to devote themselves to, or concentrate on, their writing because their social and economic circumstances prevent them from doing so.
Okay, I can well understand about the working class on account of I’m one of them but women? Why are they more prone to writers block? So I looked around on the web in search of why this might be but to no avail. Plenty of women writers writing about writers block but no reason why women are more susceptible to writers block. Considering that all female writers are not necessarily comprised of young, married women with kids (although that hasn’t even appeared to stop any of them from writing and writing well), I have not found reason one why this should be. Perhaps I should ask Liz, Sara and Emma if they know.
Either way, it took me all day just to decide to write this up. Sometimes it seems that just beginning a post with no idea what I’m going to write about and letting it find it’s own way is often successful. At least something comes out. It’s kind of fun watching where it takes me as if my mind and hands were a separate entities.
So in order to keep this thing from wandering too far afield and getting into territories completely unknown plus the fact that it’s time to watch a movie, I shall end this now. Tomorrow is another day and a trip to VA to see if there’s something that can be done about this situation of mine.
This just might be what’s supposed to happen…ya’ never know. 