” Some writers in the throes of writer’s block think their muses have died, but I don’t think that happens often; I think what happens is that the writers themselves sow the edges of their clearing with poison bait to keep their muses away, often without knowing they are doing it.”  Stephen King

“Not writing is more of a psychological problem than a writing problem. All the time I’m not writing I feel like a criminal. … It’s horrible to feel felonious every second of the day. Especially when it goes on for years. It’s much more relaxing actually to work.” Fran Lebowitz

“Writing about Writer’s Block is better than not writing at all.”  Charles Buckowski

I looked at my husband of 47 years and, not for the first time, thought, How have we stayed married all these years? 

We were dining with another couple in our travel group.  As we spooned our borscht in the St. Petersburg, Russia, dining room, I declared that people are good wherever you go.  The other couple, who had also traveled extensively, agreed. It was a kumbaya moment.  My belly was warm and my heart was full. I felt good about the world and confident of humankind’s goodness.

My husband said, “Nah.  People are by nature bad.  It is civilization and cultural mores that make people behave, against their evil nature.”

First there was silence as soup spoons froze mid-air.  Then we three ganged up on Rick, insisting he surely hadn’t meant what he said. The conversation got heated.  The other couple and I found such cynicism off-putting.

That was three years ago.  The irony is not lost on me that we were having this conversation in Russia.  During the Trump presidency, which some said was thanks to Russian intervention.  Six months before the first impeachment where the president was accused of abuse of power in his dealings with Ukraine’s president.  Less than a year before the pandemic and the ensuing anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists. And the George Floyd’s murder during a police arrest with the resulting in protests all over the country and right outside my door. Did I mention a war?  Yes, another one of those.

Little did I know that soon my sunny optimism would be shattered, and I would start sounding like my grumpy old husband.

The stats of my blog readership since its inception in 2017. What happened? Terrible, horrible, no good, very bad things.

Today I ran into an old friend who said, “I haven’t gotten any of your blogposts lately?  Did I fall off the subscribers’ list?”  At least once a week in the last couple years, someone asks about my writing, or lack thereof.  I had hit what is commonly known as “Writer’s Block.”

There are far greater writers than I who have faced such dry spells. Fran Lebowitz’s decades-long writer’s block is legendary.  Franz Kafka wrote in his diary, “The end of writing. When will it catch me up again?”  I get it.  Leo Tolstoy (yeah, the guy who wrote War and Peace) would go months and years at a time not writing.  Stephen King (yeah, the guy who has published 64 novels and 200 short stories and creeped out a couple generations) admits to a 4-month period drinking beer and watching soap operas and not writing.  There was a 55-year gap between the publication of Harper Lee’s first and second book.*  Herman Melville published Moby Dick when he was 32, but then lost the joy of writing (which seems only fair, as most college students lose the joy of reading 638 pages into the tome).

I recently read a memoir by the great comic writer, Alan Zweibel (of SNL fame).  He admitted to a 3-year writer’s block precipitated by the death of his dear friend, Gilda Radner.  He said it felt “blasphemous” writing anything humorous.  Perhaps he should have paid attention to Gilda’s alter ego, Roseanne Roseannadanna who said, “Well it just goes to show you, it’s always something! You either got a toenail in your hamburger or toilet paper clinging to your shoe.”

I managed to put pen to paper during this terrible, horrible, no good, very bad time in our nation’s history for a while–flip pieces about dying my hair, wearing masks, and cleaning an apartment nobody entered.  And then I just stopped.  Things seemed too dire to be funny.

I used to joke that my mother-in-law would live to be 100, but she wouldn’t enjoy a minute of it.  The line got good-natured chuckles from those who knew and loved her.  I think I even said it to her, and she maybe smiled.  She was definitely a half-empty kind of gal, someone who was surprised when anything turned out better than catastrophic.  One of her oft used expressions was, “It’s always something.”  That used to drive me around the bend.

I hope you will forgive me for that cheap shot at my beloved mother-in-law.  In my defense, I can only say I was so very young when I said it, that I didn’t know better.  I was only 60 at the time.

Mrs. Lingo didn’t have an easy life.  She was raised during the Depression by a cold mother who favored her other daughter.  When her sister contracted TB, Mrs. Lingo was sent to California, Ohio, to live with her grandmother for a year. Her husband was sickly all of their married life.  He had a bacterial infection for two years before antibiotics were invented, and he died when he was only 49, leaving her to raise two boys by herself.  She lived until 97 ½, but she was bedridden at the end with chronic pain and congestive heart failure.  Truly, it was always something.

You’ve heard that the older you get, the smarter your parents seem? Having survived the recent years of political discord, police brutality, mass school shootings, a pandemic, an insurrection, and now a chaser of a war . . . yeah, she’s right:  It is always something.

Several times in the last few years, my daughters asked, “Has it ever been this bad?  In all of history, has our country ever been such a mess?”

I told them, no, this is the worst it has ever been in my lifetime.  But I was wrong.

Looking back over my 70 years of life, it’s always something: the Emmett Till lynching; the McCarthy Hearings; the Cuban Missile Crisis; the construction of the Berlin Wall; the Kent State shootings; the Iran hostage crisis;  9/11; the AIDS epidemic;  the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Korea, Vietnam. One presidential assassination, three presidential impeachments. four pandemics,**  2,052 school shootings. . . It goes on and on, because it is always something, just like my mother-in-law said.

And are people inherently bad, as my husband said?  Maybe.

Invariably, after my mother-in-law’s pronouncement that “It’s always something,” she’d say, “What are you going to do?”

And that’s the question, right?  How have other people answered?  Dr. Sabin developed the oral polio vaccine.   Congress passed the Civil Rights Act.  The Berlin Wall was torn down.  NATO was formed.  Scientists invented several effective Covid tests, treatments, and vaccines. The Internet was invented (thank you, Al Gore?) and the iPhone (thanks, Steve) and Twitter (hmm, no thanks?), and these technological advancements brought the world together (and arguably, tore it apart).

And what have writers done in the worst times?  They wrote.

Authors who wrote about – or despite – bad times:  John Steinbeck. Toni Morrison.  Dr. Seuss. George Orwell.  Maya Angelou.  Pearl Buck.  Alex Hailey.  Tim O’Brien.  Willa Cather.  Ayn Rand.  Woody Guthrie.  Sandra Cisneros, Jhumpa Lahiri.

So today I wrote.  True, I wrote about not writing, but there are words on the page, all the same.

Maybe I’ve met a developmental milestone of advancing age where I understand the complexity of human experience and perceive the shades of grey. The scales have fallen from my eyes. I see it all, and I still feel it all. 

But despite it all, despite 19 innocent children being murdered in their classrooms yesterday, I will still try to have hope. 

Yes, it’s always something.

And what are you going to do?  Do what you do.  Do.

“Lose your determination to remain unchanged.”  Maya Spector

* Although Lee’s Go Set a Watchman was published in 2015, there is some evidence that she didn’t know or consent to its publication.  There is also speculation that it wasn’t a second book but rather an early draft of To Kill a Mockingbird.

**Asian Flu, Hong Kong Flu, Swine Flu, and now the Covid-19 Pandemic

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How the Coronavirus Chased Us Out of Norway
I Ran Away from Home During the Pandemic
Love in the Time of Covid:  Marriage Was Made For Exactly This
June Cleaver Has Left the House
Fun and Games Saved Our Marriage
Crawling Out of the Deep Dark Covid Hole