What Writer's Block Feels Like

I am feeling something today that I guess is called writer's block. I've begun writing several things today, two job market documents and a proposal for a presentation at Computer Connection. The writing, it hurts; sentences are barely formed, I can think only in half-phrases, words come out and I erase them all, write them again, erase more. Click around on my desktop. I feel entirely unprepared for dealing with this and my best brain thoughts filled with conventional wisdoms provide escape routes that I simply don't take. I'm just stewing in it. I think of washing the dishes, or starting again tomorrow in the early morning, of flipping on some pop music. But instead I sit here and fear that writing is over, forever. That sentiment is at once haunting, silly, lingering, and physically felt--behind the eyes, in the throat and down into my belly.

I've just cried tears, tantrum-ones, which brought me to write in this space, to try to capture the feeling of this block. There is a sharp, tight web of tension that sits behind the bridge of my nose. I picture it a throbbing red network, like those pictures of nerve bundles alight. There's a twisting in my middle that rises as though out of my body; it moves up and down, and sporadically feels like it's trying to escape through my fingers. To tame it or release it I pound on the keyboard. I can't go I can't stop. I need to move I feel stuck. It needs to rest I can't sleep. This is writer's block. It's an off-relationality with these tools, with the page; it's a feeling you just can't shake.