I Have Writ the Enemy, and I Am Spam

This post is for all of you out there who have struggled through a dry spell in writing.

I, too, have been having trouble getting back into the habit of blogging regularly.

I have tried to humorously blame it on the new and execrable block editor that WP foisted upon us, but that is just a small portion of the problem.  The block editor thing is more like chronic back pain or maybe recurring boils.  Sure, it is annoying and sometimes painful, but mere boils or fused disks shouldn’t stop us from pursuing the things we love doing.

If Bethany Hamilton can continue to be a champion surfer even after a shark bit her left arm off, I think I can muddle through with WP’s odious new editor.  For, just like the shark did not care how Bethany felt about her surfing, neither does WP care about how us writers feel about our writing.

No, as I said, the problem of my inability to write goes much deeper.

I could blame it on the heat here in Dallas.  After all, yesterday the heat index hit 126 degrees Fahrenheit (52.2 C).  Who can write when their keyboard has melted onto your lap and you can’t see the screen for the sweat in your eyes?

But, even if that’s the case, what excuse is that for not writing?    

After all, Sophia Tolstoy copied her husband’s manuscript for “War and Peace”, seven times while editing it.  Seven times!  From beginning to end … at home at night … by candlelight … after everyone had gone to bed.  Furthermore, she only used an inkwell pen.  Wikipedia is a bit vague on how she would have fared if she had had to use WordPress’s new block editor, but that is not really the point.

If Leo Tolstoy could write a novel of staggering proportions using pen and ink, and his hapless wife could copy it seven times with quill and ink under less-than-ideal conditions, then what excuse do I have to not write a short blog post every few days or so?

After much soul-searching, I finally reduced the possibilities to the following three:  

A.  My life is so boring that I have run out of things to write about.  This includes my go-to writing topic, which is to write several hundred words about nothing all.

B.  The era in which my writing would have been popular has long since passed.  I should have been a writer in the 1930s or 1940s.  In other words, my target audience consists primarily of people who died in the 1980s.  Studies have shown that they are not big users of on-line blogging sites.

C.  I am colossally lazy.  The smart money is on this option.  After all, how hard is it to toss together a few hundred words, drizzle them with a light olive oil, and twiddle a pepper grinder over them?  (Serves 8 … on a good day.)  Answer:  it’s not hard at all.  

Or the answer may well be the universally attractive answer:  D.  All of the above.

This is the answer that has been causing sighs of relief for beleaguered grade school test-takers since the beginning of time.  After all, it is all-encompassing, and therefore most likely to the the most correct.

But for some reason, it has not brought me any real sense of relief.