I believe that the so-called ‘writing block’ is a product of some kind of disproportion between your standards and your performance … one should lower his standards until there is no felt threshold to go over in writing. It’s easy to write. You just shouldn’t have standards that inhibit you from writing … I can imagine a person beginning to feel he’s not able to write up to that standard he imagines the world has set for him. But to me that’s surrealistic. The only standard I can rationally have is the standard I’m meeting right now … You should be more willing to forgive yourself. It doesn’t make any difference if you are good or bad today. The assessment of the product is something that happens after you’ve done it.

–William Stafford

(Warning:  Graphics inside)

So I was trying to spend the first part of the week continuing with a a fictional story I have been working on.  Wall.  There was this realization that to really do the story justice, I needed to write a whole historical background for a people who had none.

Big wall.  Immense wall.

Then I had a rather severe allergy attack.  Putting the two of those together left me in a panic because Friday was fast approaching and I had nothing for the column.

But I was saved, sort of.  Chaz Bono came out.  That may seem a bit weird, being as how not long ago Bono was Director of Entertainment Media for GLAAD.  But there are different kinds of coming out:    

The WeaveMothers watched the train switch to the happentrack which they had just finished.  The transition was as smooth as ever it could be.  

The Engineer guided some steam through the whistle.

And the Storyteller began the tail of the Girl and the Five Fears.