Writer's block. This has been mentioned on this site alone countless times. I do not have the exact number but judging from just the people I know and subscribed to, this has been mentioned time and time again. I imagine that this has also been discussed by other people here too.
Rampant. I think the reason that this particular subject is so popular can be attributed to the number of people experiencing this is growing in numbers. The number of aspiring writers bumping into this wall grows steadily every single day. Writer's block has a close relation to the number of articles one can produce in a specific duration. I believe that the more a person writes, the more chances he will get of having writer's block.
If a person writes daily, the possibility of having writer's block increases day by day. But the good thing is, the more you experience having writer's block, the more you will be used to dealing with it and if you experience it quite enough you will be able to develop a system to counter it.
Anyway, this article has really nothing to do with writer's block but it's another condition I am facing and fighting through right now.
Not a Writer's Block
Drinking. Not water but alcohol, lots of it. That's what we do when we celebrate things. And just yesterday, we celebrated Father's day, and as you know, it's quite the excuse to indulge in heavy drinking. And that's exactly what I did.
Times like this can really open your eyes to the realization that you are not getting any younger. Back in the days, I can down half a case of beer, that's 6 bottles of pure liquor or around 3 liters of that happy juice. And that's without having to throw up everything in my stomach including my large intestines. Also, back then, after drinking myself to sleep, I will not even feel it much the next day.
But now it's different, I only had a "few" hard drinks. I quoted the few because well, I think my few will be "a lot" for some people. It's different because I still feel drunk a day after drinking. The drinks that I poured into my stomach come back haunting me with a vengeance.
Hangover. Feeling a hangover makes you want to reach into your throat and just let everything loose. You just want to blow it all out so you can finally feel free and feel better.
Writing with a hangover is quite the challenge too. Compared to writer's block, dealing with this one is a whole lot trickier. The letters look like they are dancing and teasing you back to sleep. Your head feels heavier than usual and your body just feels drained and yearning for a cold cold beer. Water, I mean water.
When you have writer's block, you can overcome it with some reading. But try reading with a hangover, you'll absorb nothing. As in nothing. You can also derive your inspiration to overcome hangovers by listening to music. But you can't really do that with a hangover, just hearing the keyboard click makes your head want to explode. Every little sound you hear feels like someone or something is screaming at you. It's just a lot of headache.
Writing Through It
I guess the similarity between writer's block and a hangover is the way I go through it. The best way to break out of it in one go is just to keep writing through it. Although it may take you longer to write a couple of paragraphs, still it's writing. Forget about the clock, forget about the deadlines and everything else. Forget the format and forget the content. Just type away, write away and you'll feel better once you have done something you can call an article.