Overcoming Writer's Block Part 2, or What Would "Tony the Mouth" do?

Another week has rolled by and here I sit at the laptop with another case of writer's block. That's how this post starts. How will it end? It could end with a fizzle, or a swizzle, or a remonstrable whizzle, or it may not ever end at all and just continue ad infinitum ad nauseum (a phrase I seem to remember learning from my high school French teacher, Madame Griggs) from week to insufferable week until my vast readership of 108 followers (but about twice that many pageviews on any given day, depending on the topic) dwindles down (that is like Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price saying on Meet the Press this morning that Obamacare is "imploding upon itself" -- it's redundant, like our 11th grade English teacher Brian Stahler taught us using "revert back" as one example and I suspect Strunk & White address that in their epic work The Elements of Style but my brief thumb-through didn't reveal a reference -- you should get a copy of that book, by the way, if you fancy yourself a writer -- the copy I still use is the one Mr. Stahler had us buy way back in 1971).

But I ramble, and that is the point. When experiencing writer's block, write. One good exercise is the 5-minute free-write. I used to have my Kerouac class do that activity (outside of class) and it was always interesting to read their reflections on that exercise. I free-wrote a blog post in this space back in 2012 (read it here at your own peril). For some reason, that particular piece is one of my all-time highest viewed posts. Go figure....

But what does that have to do with Kerouac? It's about writing, and above all else, he was a writer. So there's your connection if you must have one. One of these days I'm going to break tradition and post something that doesn't link to Kerouac. Or maybe that's impossible, given that I've repeatedly said that everything links to Kerouac in some way or another (struck out for redundancy). Given the amount of detail we have about him from his novels and letters and many biographies, there's almost always a connection to be made. Which reminds me of the very excellent PBS series, Connections. If you haven't ever seen it, it's worth your time.

And there you have it. We've made it to the whizzle (note second link below). Whether it will be remonstrable is the remaining question (the Pennsylvania Department of Education's Chief Counsel James Sheehan taught me to be careful of saying "whether or not" -- the not being redundant -- I rather remember him saying never use it, but I think the answer is "it depends," which is a legal heuristic I also learned during my time at PDE either from Jeff Champagne or Sam Bashore -- RIP -- or both; here is a NYTimes piece on the matter that will leave you almost as confused as trying to read Infinite Jest).

Whizzle = 1. whiz; especially: make a whizzing sound; 2. to get by stealth or cunning.

Remonstrable = 1. demonstrable, evident; 2. deserving of remonstration or protest; objectionable.

Well, I got to the end by cunning meta-writing, and here is a link to your whizzle. Finally, we will make the end of this post meet both definitions of remonstrable and call it a day. It's a day.

THE FUCKING END*

*If you are offended by my use of the F-word, let me remind you that I am merely following the lead of the White House Director of Communications, Anthony "Tony the Mouth" Scaramucci. Ain't leadership grand? Anyway, feel free to complain directly to him via phone, e-mail, or letter.