Too Many Ironies in the Fire

by

Lisa Guidarini

To be honest, I’m surprised I find ironies noticeable anymore. They’ve come to be as integral a part of my daily existence as breathing. I don’t know if the word irony even applies when it becomes such a commonplace occurrence. 

I wouldn’t be bringing it up now if it didn’t have a direct bearing on the column you’re reading. The subject is one of the few things I still find ironic, but I’m getting a little ahead of myself now.

This week I sat down so many times to draft versions of this column I’ve completely lost track. It wasn’t that I couldn’t write anything, but that nothing I started panned out. I wasn’t happy with anything Here’s the irony: I’ve achieved a certain reputation among the writers I know as (and I don’t say this to brag) a natural born writer. There’s never been a time I couldn’t write something. It may not always have been good, but it was there because if there’s a pen in my hand and blank paper I’m all over it.

When I say I love writing it’s more like I lust after it. Nothing gives me the feeling writing does. Nothing is as freeing; nothing takes me out of myself like writing. Okay, sometimes reading does, too. But I do love to write.

Not only am I getting a reputation for being a feverish writer, I’m also strongly vocal in my view there’s no such thing as writer’s block. Since I personally couldn’t stop if I tried, I’ve always poo-pooed  the idea of writing paralysis. I can’t believe anyone could ever run out of words. There are just so many of them, for one thing, and it’s amazing how many combinations you can come up with. How can anyone not write?

Then came this week. Three, four, even five times I sat down with a legal pad and pen, intent on cranking out not just any column but this column. And three, four and five times I struck out. But there’s no way that can be called writer’s block. Each time I wrote something. The only problem was it was all crap. Not one salvageable idea in the lot.

If that isn’t writer’s block, what is it? I’ve got that one covered, too. It’s writer’s BLECH, defined as the state of producing large quantities of putrid prose in a manner some would deem compulsive.

Writer’s BLECH is similar to that terrible taste you get in your mouth when you have indigestion, that same burning acid backwash so unpleasant you’d do just about anything to get rid of it. The problem is a few antacids won’t cure writer’s BLECH. The only thing that relieves it is more writing, which is like saying if you have indigestion you should eat more pizza. It defies all logic.

The later in the week it got, the more I sweated my writer’s BLECH. Wednesday passed, then Thursday. Now it’s Friday, and if you don’t think I’m stressed you don’t know me at all. That’s when inspiration struck. Either that or desperation. I always get those two confused. I realized there are things in life you just can’t fight. One of them is time, another the deterioration that is aging. And the third is wrestling with a column that doesn’t feel like being written.

Being the Zen-like person I like to think I am, I changed tactics. I went “with the flow.” I embraced my inner BLECH, accepting it for what it was. And the result? Well, my friends, you’re reading it.

Let that be a lesson to you. Next time you’re overcome with writer’s BLECH don’t let it get you down. See where it takes you. Keep in mind there is no such thing as writer’s block. If you don’t believe me, check out a dictionary. They’re all in there, every last one of them, the same words Faulkner used, and Joyce and all those other guys with literary reputations. All you have to do is put them together, hoping to God they don’t suck. That’s one moral you can live by. That, and don’t spare the delete key.


Lisa Guidarini subsists, almost entirely, on her twin passions of reading and writing (running just ahead of her love for Goose Island beer and Asiago cheese). Her day job, unsurprisingly, is at a public library where she works as Adult Program Coordinator for the Algonquin Area Public Library District. (To this day, she still wonders that people really pay her for the privilege of working in a library.) By evening, she is a graduate student in a distance learning program through the University of Wisconsin—Madison’s School of Library and Information Studies. In her spare time she tends to her family, including one husband, three children, and two rambunctious Jack Russell terriers. She also enjoys digital photography, visiting old cemeteries, and the occasional old-fashioned road trip. A member of the National Book Critics Circle, she also blogs about anything literary or otherwise interesting. You can reach Lisa at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it