Devesating Writer's Block-- attempting a cure

Well, it's coming down to the final few weeks of the semester which of course always means long seminar papers are in the making. Sometimes I'm lucky and I'll have an excellent start to the paper. Other times, not so much. This is one of those times. I figured out my paper topic about 8 weeks ago for my Lacan's seminar paper. That was easy, I just had to pick a movie and Being John Malkovich seemed pretty easy to psychoanalyze. So that was done.

Then I had to figure out a paper for my Sodomy class. ugh. I've been planning all semester to work on the idea of perversion but through all of my research throughout the semester, it never really amounted to anything decent. So scratch that idea. I decided that since I'm going to be working with the Gothic for my thesis and I'll need to know American Gothic, I figured well who better to start with than Edgar Allan Poe. So one night I sat down to read a couple of his short stories with queerness on my mind and found The Tell-Tale Heart. Talk about some serious sexual innuendos. So that's what I decided to go with. I'm doing a queer reading of Poe's concealed rhetoric within The Tell-Tale Heart, or at least attempting to or something like that.

This is my first semester that I've had to write two seminar papers concurrently. Let me tell you, had I been faced with this earlier in my graduate career, I don't think I'd still be in school right now. This shit is tough. T-O-U-G-H. tough. Anyway, I've been steadily working on these two paper for the past three weeks. Seriously every waking moment I'm either researching, writing, or thinking about Lacan or Poe. I'm exhausted, mentally, physically, emotionally, and any other sensory perception available that can be exhausted, I'm it.

Luckily though, over the course of the past three weeks I've managed to create outlines, gather research material, and write what I know before doing any serious research. I've surmounted 9 pages of Lacan and 6 pages of Poe based primarily off what previous knowledge I had in my head. Pretty good I'd say.

That was until the research began, I HATE doing research. I like to just know things. And yes I know that the only way I'll know something is through research, but that doesn't make me hate doing research any less. I feel like it's a waste of time to sort through online journals, books and 'zines, and even a bigger waste of time to sort through hard copy books that don't come with a handy "CNTRL F" button. So inevitably, I've contracted a serious case of writer's block. If you are an avid reader of my blog here you know that I've faced writer's block before, several times and I always say it's worse than it's ever been. Well, I was lying. THIS is the worst it has ever been. Seriously. And of course I'm sure the next case of writer's block I experience will be worse than right now. I do NOT look forward to that one. :/

As the writer's block has subsumed for the past two days I've been Googling "how to cure writer's block" self-help article. Every single suggestion is bullshit. I've tried it all, nothing helps. Then I decided to write something for myself, that no one else will ever see. It was just a short simply poem about nothing. But it was mine, it was creative, it was inventive, it was mine. And that's when it hit me. I need to write to cure writer's block. Sounds like I should be on a Starburst commerical. Writing to cure writer's block is a juicy contradiction. Yep. exactly. But as a writer, I must continue to write, always. Regardless of what I write I need to write, I want to write, I enjoy it, it is me, I am it. This reason of course is why I am writing this post right now as opposed to writing one of my papers. I came to the conclusion of a paragraph on my Lacan paper and my mind went blank. 'Now what?' I asked myself, sitting there staring at the blinking cursor one tab space over. What's left to say? I cant really look at my outline for direction because like always, I've deviated so far from the original outline that it doesn't even matter or really exist anymore. I'm writing from memory and creativity. But still, 'now what do I say?'

So like I said, that's why I'm here. Writing this right now, in the midst of a Lacan paper agonizing me from behind this little Mozilla window. The moment I close my Internet browser I know I'll find the blinking cursor staring out at me. Taunting and mocking me for my writer's block. I hope that the moment I close this browser, I look over to Ecrits by Lacan and notice a single word. Whatever word it may be, this magically little word strike a chord in my memory and off my little fingers go typing away into their destiny of acute carpel tunnel syndrome. Oh little magical word, please present yourself to me the moment I close this browser. In an attempt to cure my writer's block by writing, here's hoping for a magic word to appear to get me thinking again to write more.