Blighter's Rock.

I wanted to write something about a place by the shore called Blighter's Rock. It's an imaginary place I go when I have all of my energy sucked out of me and yet I want to continue writing. I don't want to go there, but a gravitational force sucks me in that direction. When I have no energy, the "juices" I'd normally use to create - anything - are gone. It's those days that, as Mel described in her blog, "the cat rubs up against me, wanting something from me, and it sends me over the edge." It's THOSE days that I am pulled to Blighter's Rock, and there is no coming back!  

Blighter's Rock is not just about not having anything to say (if it were, I'd be there all the time...) It's about not having the ability to do anything. I used to think it was procrastination or laziness, and because of that, I'd beat myself up when I'd go there. I've come to understand it to be that overwhelming feeling where you have so many things in your mind that you don't know how to focus on any one of them - not even enough to take a baby step - and that's really all you need to do to start walking away from that place and back to where you really live.

I've finally gotten to the point that when I am in this terrible place, I can make a list of the things I need to accomplish (sometimes that might be as easy as "get a good night's sleep"), and then set to do them. I do the easy ones first - so I don't start crying... and the harder tasks start to seem easier and less overwhelming with the satisfaction of getting some of the easier items checked off...

NOTE: I thought I was being so clever when I started thinking of this place, but then I Googled it. You can thank some damn Australian for stealing my thunder. In his blog, he writes about a celebration of Russell Hoban's birthday. Hoban is the author of more than sixty books for children (including The Mouse and His Child and the Frances books) and more than a dozen novels for adults.  His best known novels include Riddley Walker, Turtle Diary and Kleinzeit. Hoban writes on yellow paper, he says, to ward off "blighter's rock...to intensify the blankness of a blank sheet of white paper is to run to meet trouble considerably more than halfway."

There are a couple of other references to it too... shit... and to think I thought I was so original.