This afternoon my landlord, a hero of a guy, is in my bathroom plunging the sink. It’s been a slow drainer for months. Over that time, I’ve used gallons of deadly stuff that comes in unwieldy plastic bottles with skull and crossbones images on the label. Still, the sink won’t open.

As I was kibitzing over Scott’s shoulder, it came to me that this stuckness in the drain is a beautiful, albeit sludgy, metaphor for what happens to my writing occasionally. You know, how slowly and reluctantly the words sometimes come, how they sometimes don’t come at all. I try all manner of tricks to get the writing flowing again—staring at the screen or the page, writing one (wrong) word or another, rewriting what I’ve just written, going back to the beginning of the page, the paragraph, the sentence, and starting over, getting up and moving away from my desk, getting a glass of water, hitting the stash of almonds, taking a walk, taking a shower, taking a nap. Coffee! Still, nothing.

I know at times like these, it’s only that I’m stuck; I don’t have writer’s block. I don’t need a therapist (though my sink, it turns out, does need a plumber), I just need to breathe. I need to stop trying to force the words. Forced words are never true.

Maybe I’m just done for the day. Maybe the story or the poem or the blog is done for the day, too. Maybe we both need some breathing space. A little time away. Maybe I’ll sleep on it. Ask the dream maker to bring me a gift in the night.

What I won’t do is abandon it. After all, who would move out of her great apartment just because the bathroom sink is clogged? I’ll come back to the writing fresh in the morning, after I’ve had my coffee, done some yoga, taken time for a little meditation. Maybe I’ll be amazed at how easy the words flow again; how simple the solution to the problem. Maybe there wasn’t really a problem, just a little sludge in the workings between imagination and fingers.

I’ll spare you the pictures of the clogged sink, just as I’ll spare you images of me in my stuck-ugliness. What I will share is a photo I took from my work space this afternoon, taken as I was writing this blog.
Maybe, if I ever get stuck again (and I’m sure I will), I’ll just pull out this photo and be awestruck by how the setting sun paints colors in a sky half drunk with clouds.