The magic cure

Writers block. The most annoying thing in the world to the novelist, the poet, the literate.
Here are a few steps for poets on how to cure the fatal illness:

1. Get a pen and write down something, ANYTHING, to make sure your hand still works.

2. DO NOT ATTEMPT THE TYPE OF WRITING YOU ARE BLOCKED FROM.

3. Instead, write down something completely unrelated to what you are blocked from, this may be a diary type entry, some random words, the last insult you were told, the worst joke you've ever heard, the last instruction you recieved, a shopping list! ANYTHING at all. Make sure to fill about a page.

4. Get a highlighter and systematically highlight some of the words you have written. Perhaps every fourth word, all words starting with the letter T, all words that appeal to you etc...

5. Write these words down a page leaving spaces in between.

6. Turn on some music, and while listening to it write down phrases and words that appeal to you between, amongst and around the words you already have.

7. Listen to some more music, add words to the words you have already, relate two different types of music.

8. Take your list of words and somehow seperate it into four lists of equal amounts.

9. Play join the dots, starting with the first word on your list choose a word from each list (you can throw in the's and her's) and construct several lines until you have drained your lists.

10. Arrange the sentences you have made into some logical order. Throw in a few more, and you have a poem, or some inspiration for a poem. Hopefully the giant list of words and sentence combinations should trigger your failing hands back into action, and if not keep trying!

Make up some awful poems, try to write the worst poem in the history of all literature, try to combine two or three of your other works, make your homework into a poem, try it all. And if these suggestions do nothing for you sufferers, my utmost apologies. But keep trying! We need poets in this world! And remember, you can't let the disease win!