Shell Shocked: Writer’s block
Writing a humor column is a lot harder than I thought. I live in fear that I will run out of ideas. Who ever said that writers are a secure breed?
“Michele,” I asked my girlfriend. “Do you have any ideas for something for me to write about? I think I’m suffering from writer’s block.”
She looks miffed. “You want ideas from me? Write about how you take out the garbage.”
I thought about that, but there didn’t seem to be anything terribly dramatic or romantic about taking the garbage out. Particularly since I never did it. Which was the subtle message she was trying to ram home.
“Joe,” I asked my tennis partner one morning. “I’m running out of ideas for my column. I find I have nothing to say, no insights to share, no spontaneous gems to nurture, no witty asides to contribute. Do you have any suggestions for something I can write about?”
Joe thought for a moment as he shook off my booming serve which hit him square on top of his head.
“Why don’t you write about the fact that the little guy doesn’t get a fair shake in today’s society?”
I was puzzled. “Joe, this is a humor column. Don’t you think that’s too heavy a subject for readers of ‘Shell Shocked’?
“Besides,” I said, “why are you taking up the cause of the little guy? You’re a very wealthy man.”
“I don’t mean poor people. By the little guy, I mean the little guy. I’m only five foot four and your overhead smashes keep hitting me on the head. If I were five inches taller, I’d beat you regularly.”
Joe was no help to me either. I was getting frantic. I was fast approaching my deadline and my brain was dead. I had no thoughts, no inspirations.
Just at that moment, the locksmith arrived to change the locks at our house so that my girlfriend couldn’t lock me out anymore.
“Yale,” I said, “I’m running out of ideas for my column. Do you have any suggestions?”
Yale thought a moment as he was grinding metal onto metal.
“Well,” Yale thought. “Something funny happened to me the other day that you might want to write about. The people at Jerry’s supermarket called me and asked me to have a look at their locks. It seems that when all the help left one night and locked the place up they thought everything was all secure.
“But when they opened Jerry’s the next morning, they found that six quarts of milk had mysteriously been opened and the contents removed.”
Yale paused for a moment and began to chuckle. This sounded good. Maybe it was leading to an amusing climax which would stop the presses at the Reporter-Islander.
“Go on,” I said. “What happened?”
“Well, they looked all around and couldn’t find anything. No one had broken in or anything. I looked at all the locks and found that they hadn’t been tampered with. We all scratched our heads. It was surely a mystery.”
Yale paused again. He was obviously enjoying his story.
“Suddenly,” Yale continued, “we heard some noise from behind the pet food section and we went to take a look. We saw a cat and a litter of nine kittens she had recently given birth to and they had swiped the milk, brought it over to the pet food section and had lapped it all up. The mystery was solved.”
There was an awkward pause as Yale waited for my reaction. Somehow I had expected more.
“That’s it?” I asked. “That’s the whole story? There’s nothing more?”
Yale looked disappointed. “Isn’t that a funny story? Your readers will love it. They were the cutest kittens you ever saw. I think I’ve solved your writing problem.”
“Yale,” I said, “you haven’t even solved my lock problem. You just put a lock on the refrigerator door. The front door’s over there. Please keep your mind on your work.”
I left him to sort out his locksmith tools and went into the other room to make a phone call. I dialed a number and waited.
“Sanibel City Hall. How may I help you?”
“Yes, did anything funny happen over there today?”
Art Stevens is a long-time columnist for the Islander. His tongue-in-cheek humor is always offered with a smile.