A blank page.

Notes tumble from the speakers of my laptop while my fingers remain poised and unmoving on the keyboard. Thoughts swirl in my head, but I have no distinct words to record.

Writer’s block, my old friend. Welcome back.

I’m ready to write. I have ideas tucked away for this moment. My tea is brewed, and I am sufficiently comfortable to sit and work for a few hours, but not comfortable enough to fall asleep. It’s the perfect writing set-up.

But the words aren’t forming.

Normally, words find me. They wrap around my ideas and pull them out of my mind and spill them onto the page in front of me. Normally, I can’t turn the words off. I find myself narrating everyday encounters because words don’t leave me alone.

Whenever I sit down to work on this piece that I’ve been formulating forever and ever, the words abandon me. I’m left to drown in a sea of unfathomable thoughts that crest and crash, but never quite reach the beach. No matter how I try to tack random words to these thoughts, they never feel right. They feel ingenuine. Fake. Forced.

That’s when the frustration sets in.

Why can’t I do this? Thousands of words are traded every day, but I can’t find the 500 I need to finish this paper, the perfect verb to complete this sentence, or the perfect analogy to drive the point home. It’s infuriating to know that I can’t force my brain to do these things.

So I quit. I rage and rant and rave as I angrily chug dregs of my Earl Greyer and hope that the caffeine will do the job. It doesn’t. I glare at the clock, willing it to move backward. It doesn’t.

Eventually, I realize that it takes more than anger, frustration, or good luck to write. It takes patience, hard work, and perseverance to that end point: a finished piece.

So I re-open my laptop that I had slammed shut in a fit of frustration and set my sights on my goal. I re-center myself. I start again, but this time with an open heart. I wait for the words to find me, but this time I choose to be on the lookout, too. I don’t take no for an answer. I keep searching until I find that perfect metaphor, adjective, or subordinating conjunction. I work. I worry that it’s not as good as the inspired work I do when I don’t have to try. But I realize something important: that’s not work. That’s inspiration. They are two separate entities that create completely separate work. In order to create a polished and finished piece, inspiration and hard work need to mingle. A good piece cannot exist without a bit of inspiration, and it will never be finished without hard work. Where inspiration ends, hard work begins. Where hard work ends, inspiration begins. It’s a cycle.

Even when writer’s block rears its irritating head, I don’t let it shake me. I know that it’s just part of the writing cycle--it’s time to switch gears. The inspiration has run dry, and it’s time to fuel my work with hard work if I want to finish it. Even in my frustration, that is my goal: to finish my work.

Writer’s block, you will not get the best of me. In the end, you push me to work harder to hurdle your challenges. You will not best me; you will better me. Though I despise you entirely, thank you for making me realize that I have not been battling you this whole time--I’ve been battling me.