I’m suffering from some serious writer’s block on this blog and even worse at work. I don’t know what the deal is, but the deal isn’t good. When life hands me lemons, I do what most of you would do. I Google lemons to figure out what the hell I’m supposed to do with these lemons. If you haven’t figured it out already, a lemon in this case is a metaphor for writer’s block.

Google gives me 8,810,000 entries for "writer’s block". It starts with Wikipedia’s entry for writer’s block, which is defined as, "a phenomenon involving temporary loss of ability to continue writing, usually due to lack of inspiration or creativity". No shit. I already know that. Now, how do I cure it?

Ah, here it is. Practical Tips for Beating Writer’s Block. I click on it and it gives me an article on About.com titled, Top 10 Tips for Overcoming Writer’s Block. Of course, there are 10 tips, which actually tells me only about 7 or 8 are useful tips and the other few are useless bullshit made up to complete the list at 10. I’ll go back to Google and see if someone has the integrity to publish a Top 4 Tips for Curing Writer’s Block.

No such luck, but here’s something much more interesting and related to my love for the liquor.

Top 15 Great Alcoholic Writers.
15. Hunter Thompson
14. Raymond Chandler
13. John Cheever
12. O. Henry
11. Tennessee Williams
10. Dylan Thomas
9. Dorothy Parker
8. Edgar Allan Poe
7. Truman Capote
6. Jack Kerouac
5. William Faulkner
4. Charles Bukowski
3. F. Scott Fitzgerald
2. James Joyce
1. Ernest Hemingway

According to this list, my options are to die young, go gay, or grow old and crazy and and shoot myself. Nope.

Back to Google. Here’s a link to Brainy Quotes from Hemingway. I’m a sucker for quotes. What does our old drunk suicidal friend have to say?

“I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.”

Brilliant. That solves it. Tonight I’m going to fill the well with a bike ride and a drink (or four).

I just thought of something kind of funny. What if I went to Google and typed in "writer’s block" and instead of 8-million entries it pulled up zero entries? I deserve a fifth drink tonight just for that brainy thought.

“Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go on an overnight drunk, and in 10 days I'm going to set out to find the shark that ate my friend and destroy it. Anyone who wants to tag along is more than welcome.” – Steven Zissou