Getaway Girls New Orleans...random nonsense & bits of fiction by Deirdre H. Gage

Why do they call it writer's "block" -- which sounds like something wooden and practical that you might pick up at Home Depot?

Really, "writer's ugly gray fog of despair" would be more accurate.

Anyway, regardless of what you call it, and for fun let's call it Fred, it has descended on my brain, infected my laptop and frankly, I think it's making my hair flat. Every time I sit down at the computer to work on my book, an evil troll pops out of my head and whispers increasingly depressing and just plain rude comments until I sigh and get distracted by something less difficult.

You know you have writer's block when giving the dog a bath sounds like a really good thing to do RIGHT NOW. Or you're suddenly tempted to start on those 23 thank-you notes from a 5-year-old's birthday party that are two months late.

I'm almost too scared to stay in front of the keys, worried what other task that I've been procrastinating might sound like a good idea. If I start on the family Christmas card that I haven't sent in two years, I'm totally screwed.

It's like one of those stupid summer colds that show up in July and you can't seem to shake. And you just know if writer's block were an actual disease, it wouldn't be one of those bacterial infections you could clear up with a z-pack. Nah, it'd be a virus, long and lingering. The kind that makes you want to climb into bed, read OK magazine and eat Cheez-its.

Wait, that's what I want to do all the time.

Damn.

I knew things were bad when I actually took the latest issue of Parenting magazine to bed with me at 9:30 last night. To be fair, I'd already read all the trashy stuff and I was left with Time or Parenting. Food and Wine I considered, but it's for happier days. Deep down in my funk, twenty recipes for pea shoots was just more than I could handle. And let's be honest, I couldn't muster the brain power to fake my way through Time. Especially now that they've taken away my once-reliable Joel Stein column. WTF, Time? Why not take away the Tooth Fairy while you're at it. Speaking of which, my mental fog caused me to forget to put money under the pillow just last week. Sure, I spun it -- "look, the tooth fairy left you money in your shoe instead, you must have missed her. Silly tooth fairy!" but it was a close call. And clearly a distress signal that my writer's block is now morphing into mommy block. Possibly person block. Probably at some point I will just turn into a block.

Sigh.

Hold on. My computer just lost power. I plugged it in, turned it back on and came back to this post. That's gotta be a sign, right? Maybe writer's block isn't winning after all.

Take a hike, Fred. There's a new beast in town.

And she's fresh out of Cheez-its.