Dead End

10 Reasons Why You Have Writer’s Block

Consider quitting while you’re still ahead

1. Writing for Medium, you know your story will only make between $0.75 on the low end and $4.45 at the high ceiling of spectacular success. When the pinnacle of success won’t even fetch you a coffee, inspiration can sometimes feel like waiting for rain in a desert.
2. Your last story bombed even after your brazen tactic of tag-bombing half of your followers. You were really trying to pay the energy bill with this last tag-bombing prompt flop. Instead, you were only able to buy your noisy kid a lollipop that quieted him down for about 2 minutes.
3. Every time you start to write on the sly at your real job, your boss tells you to get your head out of your ass and help the next customer. This is nothing short of dramatic road kill for an aspiring writer.
4. You are trying to figure out how the CEO and his band of 12 Secret Editors will ever have the courage to boost a writer who spends all of his wit, energy, and talent making fun of Medium. Good luck with that.
5. You are trying to respect the Medium algorithm by writing an uplifting, inspirational self-help listicle after spending the last 8 hours fielding angry complaints about your crappy product at work. You might as well tell a pig on the way to the slaughterhouse to smile.
6. Just when you were about to say something hopeful about the life of an aspiring freelance writer with no connections, you went ahead and googled the average salary of CEOs. Bad idea. Always remember, ignorance is bliss.
7. Your customer won’t take a hint that you’re in the middle of a stanza of your next award-winning $1.17 poem that your small band of followers are waiting for like their next shot of morphine. Once again, you must put down what you are doing and put on your very best ‘the customer is always right’ face, and say, “How can I fucking help you today?”
8. Just as you finally found a rhythm in writing your next aspiring $2.36 listicle, your 6 year old son drops the bombshell news that he will be suing you and Mom for conceiving him. This is a killer for even the most productive of writers.
9. Just as you sit down to write after a full day at work, your partner announces that there is nothing but a stick of butter, some parsley, and an old jar of olives in the fridge, and that there is no financial way in hell you two will be ordering out for the third night in a row. Your story can wait, writer. Go fetch some groceries and cook up something to eat.
10. You are trying to respond to a writing challenge that asks you to share your greatest victories in life. You don’t have any, so you can stop trying.

© Carlo Zeno 2023

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Thanks for reading, and thanks to the Haven for considering this piece. For more dramatic revelations, try these 👇

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