Writer Blocked

I'd like to introduce a new term. It's similar to Writer's Block, but it's external - not internal. I'm calling it Writer Blocked. And it's basically a name for that peculiar phenomenon where, every single time you start to make progress on any sort of writing project, the Universe conspires to throw every obstacle it can find into your path.

You want some examples? Okay, as long as I'm ranting anyway:

• Random phone calls...
• Neighborhood kids knocking on the door...
• Your own children, being clingy and demanding because they're sick...
• Your children, refusing to go sleep and give you that precious half an hour of quiet time before you collapse yourself, because they're not sick...
• Getting sick yourself... (Every single time I get into a project. I swear. Every. Single. Time.)
• Your spouse describing her day, because you've just sat down at your computer and opened a word processor, and so are clearly available to talk...
• Cats meowing for food...
• Cats meowing for water...
• Cats meowing for incomprehensible reasons of their own...
• Children getting back out of bed because they don't want to go to sleep by themselves...
• Friends and family calling you up for technical support...
• Friends and family calling you up to ask about upcoming plans...
• School book fairs, or PTA Meetings, or just good old-fashioned homework that somehow hasn't gotten done yet...
• The sudden and inconvenient realization that if you don't stop and run some laundry, you won't have any socks to wear to work in the morning...
• Or any pants...
• The discovery that you're too tired to focus on the screen, let alone compose text...
• Massive, evening-and-weekend-consuming projects at work...

...And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Now, some of this is unavoidable. And some of it could be resolved by that classic bit of advice for writers who are - as I currently am - frustrated by their lack of writing time and/or writing progress: "You have to make writing a priority." I mean yes, technically, I could do that - if I wanted to be the sort of asshole who blows off their kids and leaves their spouse doing all the work because they're busy with their own projects.

And, yes, a lot of this will ease up or blow over - we're about three weeks out from the Big Event that marks the end of our busy season at work, and we're nearing the end of my wife's teaching semester, and the boys will eventually be less sick (though that doesn't always give me any more writing time), and at some point I hope to stop being sick myself.

Even so, there really does seem to be some particularly evil corollary of Murphy's Law when it comes to writing projects...