You ever get those moments when you wonder why you even bother to try to write?

I get those. A lot.

This blog was intended as a writing practice to help overcome such moments but it doesn’t always work that way. Sometimes it’s just a new source of blockage rather than an unlocking of my mind. I’ll want to sit down and make witty redneck jokes in regards to a new movie about “cannibalistic” West Virginian inbreds, but then can’t think of anything funny to add. Or I’ll want to write an inspiringly poignant essay about our eroding freedoms, poor Mike Hawash and the importance of living every day to the fullest – and then waste an entire evening wading through mental cloudiness. I thought I had a creative idea to post about the Filipinos who nail themselves to crosses every Easter and the seemingly heartless cynicism of journalists … but the words never appeared.

It doesn’t matter if I’m trying to work on a poem, looking for ideas for a freelance article to help get me out of my editing rut or writing here, in this blog specifically created to break down the writer’s block and make the words flow – it just sucks sometimes. I had an instructor in college who said (paraphrasing here): Most writers don’t love to write – they hate writing, it’s torture. But they have to. If they don’t, they feel even worse than they do when they’re trying to write. Amen, brother.

Unfortunately, knowing this doesn’t stop the resentment that builds after a night of staring at the screen, coming up with nothing. You watch a movie about the Beats for inspiration and instead feel even more creatively castrated and behind schedule in your quest to set fire to the world. You wake up the next day, wonder if your brain is capable of producing anything creative or worthwhile and start to question why you ever bother at all.

And that’s when you visit Warren Ellis’ blog during groggy morning surfing and stumble across an amazing-ass description of what it’s like to be hit by the “Holy Fire” and why writing is so addictive. You suddenly remember why you do this to yourself and why your struggle to write for a living is worth all these hours stretched out on the racks in the medieval dungeons of your mind.

Now maybe you can move forward.