Writer's Block

I am a deadline hugger. I look at the deadline, I mull it over, I look at it some more, I pull it close to me, I think about it again and then it is there, hovering over my head like a black and stormy rain cloud. After hours, days and even weeks of thinking about it, it is there and I begin to panic. Two days before deadline I  have usually finished half of what I need to have done. So I plod along, sometimes not writing, but just building the story in my head, working it over, tasting it like a fine wine. Just when I have gotten sick of thinking about it I put pen to paper, or usually fingers to computer. I write and I write until I am so near the end I can taste it — then it hits me — writer's block.

There is a reason they call it writer's block and not writer's sidewalk, or writer's street. Because it is worthy of a whole block. It sits there, staring at you as you pace and pull your hair and scream and finally cry. It shows up to make procrastinators and deadline huggers like myself, sorry they didn't begin sooner. It is supposed to be a tool to teach the writer that they should never operate in this manner again, but either it is ineffective or the writer is just too darn stubborn to learn any kind of lesson at all.

I just want to say, dang you writer's block. Dang you deadlines. I need to go pull my hair some more.