My Words are Stuck

I haven't written anything in about six weeks. Nothing. Not a treatment or a scene or even a logline. I haven't even pulled the typewriter out to plunk on it. I'm not even interested in reading screenwriting blogs. That's like my main procrastination method of choice. I have hard copy grammar and punctuation corrections that I can't bring myself to transfer to the computer file.

It's pretty bad, boys and girls.

It becomes a vicious cycle. I don't want to write anything, and so I don't write anything because I'm sure it will be awful, and then I feel guilty about not wanting to write, and so I don't write anything because I'm sure if I were a real talented writer I'd have turrets from needing to write so nothing I write could be good and why am I such a poser? Nonwriters don't understand this paranoia. Just imagine how you would feel if you suddenly found your favourite food made you gag or participating in your favourite hobby made you want to gouge your eyes out. Something like that.

I thought about cutting myself off completely. No blogs, no books, no script pages floating around. I could carry a legal pad and a pen, and in complete isolation from the rest of the screenwriting world, in silence and seclusion, I could doodle with whatever words peeked out from whatever dark reaches they're hiding in. Perhaps it doesn't need to be that extreme. But, I am definitely not going to push it. Paranoia punctures joy. And if under the layers of hard work and drained veins and hours of word-smithing, all crusted with a shallow layer of self loathing, if there isn't a core of joy underneath all that, then what's the point?

I'm just biding my time, blank page. Words will come when you least expect it...