For the past ten days I have been digesting the indigestible...a long pharmaceutical advertising project. It is like a mental marathon across a wide, dry erg.
At first, procrastination conquers all...I balk, circle the project warily as intuition whispers what I am about to suffer.
Then I hurl my brain into the void, write furiously headlines and copy, as if trying to dig a hole in the massive dunes of labor that surround and envelope me to escape through the other side.
After a few days I am halfway done. I draw a deep breath of relief. The rest will surely be easier, I will be working downhill. But exhaling, I have no more energy than before. That pause does not refresh, it reveals to me how little is left in my waterskins. How tired I am! The inspiration has evaporated into the sauna that surrounds me and my work. I push myself but my mind is slowing. I must work the weekend, clear away hours in which to write for minutes at a time. I must concentrate...concentrate. But my mind is working so hard and the words are coming so... slowly.
This is not a writer's block. It is a writer's breakdown. This is what happens when the glutinous brain matter turns to glue. This what happens when...
But excelsior! Or is eureka! I have done the improbable. I have digested the indigestible. I have done what no one but some diminutive Japanese man in Coney Island has done for 3 consecutive years...
No, I have not scarfed 50 hotdogs in 10 minutes! But I have written 70 pps of pharmaceutical copy in eight days! I have poured over slides and managed to make comprehensible statements...Is this a sense of achievement I feel or the sort of relief a person feels after passing the largest mental stone in all of human history?
Hopefully not to be continued...
Eric
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