rusty hangover

My writing feels rusty. Like some manner of creative arthritis, my fingers need coaxing to tap and pound the keys. The gaps between the joints have atrophied a touch. I'm like a stop-motion skeleton clicking away. The words are there, I just need to remember them. And where they go. And, occasionally, why they go there.

It's kind of like a hangover. A really bad hangover. You know those sorts of hangovers - the sort where it takes you a minute or two to work out where you are, even if it's your own bed. You touch your face to make sure it's there. Then begins that slow assessment, working out where the pain is coming from, clenching you fingers, wiping the goo from your eyes. Maybe there's a trail of drool dried at the corner of your mouth. You smack your lips and wince at the taste of your mouth. There's a pint of water next to your bed, but steering it to your lips is a challenge. You look in the mirror and recognise the face, but can't place it. Even working the shower is too much for you. By the time you figure the taps out, opening the shampoo becomes impossible.

In the end you're clean and dressed but still feel as though you're having an out of body experience. Or that you've borrowed someone else's body. Someone else who treated that body they lent you very badly. You'd like to register a complaint, but through the haze the truth dawns, and the body's yours. And you did that to yourself.

And so my writing drought has wrought a writing hangover, not caused by an excess but by a dearth. Where my words don't look right, don't read right and don't feel right. They feel somewhat like someone else's, but they're mine.

And like a hangover, I did it to myself. There's no one else to blame.