I am not a fan of Writer’s Block

I am not a fan of Writer’s Block

WRITER'S BLOCK is a condition, associated with writing as a profession, in which an author loses the ability to produce new work. The condition varies widely in intensity. It can be trivial, a temporary difficulty in dealing with the task at hand. At the other extreme, some "blocked" writers have been unable to work for years on end, and some have even abandoned their careers. It can manifest as the affected writer viewing their work as inferior or unsuitable, when in fact it could be the opposite.

Currently, I suffer from this affliction so well noted on my favourite internet source; Wikipedia. Now we could dwell on what I’m blocked from writing, how I got here, what to do, blah blah blah.
But you’re not here for stories about ME. Well you are. But not the boring ones.

Today’s subject, for lack of something better, Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is a wonderfully distracting tool. It can be a source of information, misinformation, silly facts, horrible lies and an effective procrastination tool favoured by many in the writing, office, student and ‘alive’ occupation. We’ve all done it, we’re all doing it right now! There’s a word that’s new. There’s a place you’ve never heard of, there’s something really gross that you want to know the origin or a silly limerick you can’t remember the end of. Jokes, people, places, religion, products, imaginary lands, systems of government and law – you name it Wikipedia has it.

Like my favourite word:

BOX (plural boxes) describes a variety of containers and receptacles for permanent use as storage, or for temporary use often for transporting contents. The word derives from the Greek πύξος (puxos), "box, boxwood".

Don’t ask me how but there are 9 items on the table of contents for the box article on Wikipedia. The greek origin of the word and everything! Who needed to know so much about Box?

It has everything, even a meta-self referential section for those people who talk about meta-meta-meta-fiction-non-fiction-meta-meta.

WIKIPEDIA is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 17 million articles (over 3.4 million in English) have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world, and almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site. Wikipedia was launched in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger  and has become the largest and most popular general reference work on the Internet, ranking seventh among all websites on Alexa and having 365 million readers.

Okay, I found it important to note that encyclopaedia was spelled incorrectly to my standards (US I believe, which is fine but dammit I’m Canadian! Spell it my way!)

On another note, I find that anyone who throws in a ‘meta’ seriously suddenly sounds like a prat.

1. PRAT Basically someone who’s a major idiot, or is delusional and dumb. Acts against logic and thinks he’s self-righteous. AKA: Major dumbass.
Good example: Percy from HP and from 5th book

"You stupid prat!"

2. PRAT n. English term, primarily used in United Kingdom. The literal meaning is "bottom" or "rump"; aka backside, buttocks, sacrum, tail end. This lends itself to the slang meaning of "ass," or "clueless person of arrogant stupidity." It is not always directly translatable to American slang. For example, if you used the term "prat hat" in the U.K., you would likely be laughed out of town by the locals.

I can't believe what an overbearing idiot he is. What a prat!

Strangely Wikipedia was lacking this definition. I had to make my way over to Urban Dictionary.com. So maybe Wikipedia doesn’t have something for everything?

Well that was a waste of time.