When I was eight, a rainy day was a sure fire way to put me in a surly mood. If it happened on a weekend don’t even think about making me smile. You were guaranteed to find me spending the day staring out the window and pouting as hard as humanly possible. Twenty years later and I have done a complete 180. Listening to the rain come down on my day off today was like music to my ears. Why the change? Simple. I’m dealing with a mild case of writer’s block and rain is the best medicine.

I’ve got about three projects that I have in progress right now, and I have hit a speed bump in all three of them. The trouble with knowing the beginning and ending of a story is that you have to fill the middle with something. Filling the middle requires time. Time to waste doing all of the unproductive things. Time to aimlessly watch the coffee pot. Time to crank out pages of drivel, time to re-write that drivel into something that doesn’t make you want to bang your head against a wall, and time to re-write it again so that you can actually finish a session feeling like you may actually be good at this stuff. You know what rainy days give you?

Time.

Sunshine on my day off makes me feel like I should get ‘important’ stuff done. I should do my grocery shopping, or go do some sort of physical activity. Dark skies and rainy days mean that I don’t have to feel guilty about staying in the house and wasting time. Also means that eventually I won’t have any choice but to sit down and hammer something out. So here’s my recipe for curing writer’s block:

1. Stay in bed all morning while you climb Mount Everest.
As I have mentioned before, my mount everest is Ulysses by James Joyce. I read the forward today and immediately took a victory lap around the apartment.

2. Drink all the coffee.
Literally. All of it. Extra points if it is flavored in some way. (I’m on pot number 3.)

3. Play a vinyl.
It only works if it’s a vinyl. If you’re going to fill a cliché it’s just not quite the same when you do it with an iPod. (Today: The National, and Hozier.)

4. Write. Extra points if it’s in a notebook, nothing makes you feel more productive than filling up a blank piece of paper with words.

5. When it starts pouring, go look out the window and pretend you’re in a 90s music video. Ideas for inspiration: Alanis Morissette, Jewel, Matchbox Twenty, and everything Goo Goo Dolls.

6. Repeat steps as necessary until you get some kind of working product that you can come back to when the sun comes out.

Followed these steps and you’re still stuck? It’s not gonna happen for you today. Go put your pajamas back on and binge watch a television show. (My go-to at the moment is The Wire.)

That’s my secret. Now you know. If you want to try it out, you may have to wait a while. The sun is peeking through my window as we speak. I am immediately feeling the urge to run an errand, or go to the gym…Does watching baseball on TV count as an outdoor activity?