When I'm stuck.

When I'm stuck, I put a virtual piece of paper in my virtual typewriter and start typing. I miss the feel of my old IBM. I miss the strike of the keys, the efficient whirr of its motor and the gentle, encouraging ring that would sound the end of a line and the beginning of another. I miss its large, flat carriage I could rest my head on when I was thinking. Ah, I miss.

But of course, I love my Mac Book. Hidden inside it are millions of words, neat and spell-checked and endlessly stored. When I am stuck I just start typing. I think relentlessly about what I am stuck on, in this case a new campaign, and I type with the sureness that something will come.

Sometimes when I'm stuck I think of Georges Simenon who wrote something like 400 novels. Or John O'Hara who has fallen out of favor with critics but seems to have written more than any mortal ever, wonderful short stories and bitter novels about a time and place and a sort of outsider I can understand.

When I'm stuck I've found that it helps to write. To write about everything you see. This morning on my run I saw a huge bit of graffiti scrawled on a naked concrete wall. "Sergio and Kathy" it said. Their relationship as permanent as spray paint.

It doesn't happen often to me, being stuck. But when I am, I type. Until I become unstuck.