Tuesday, April 12, 2011

J is for Jerk

I'm really stretching it today on the A to Z blogging challenge. Over at my personal blog, the feature of the day is Jack and Jill and I started a campaign to resurrect nursery rhymes.

Unfortunately, my well of inspiration is drained and I'm suffering from writer's blog-block at the moment. The only "J" word I can think about is "jerk" and I really don't want to wax poetic in a negative fashion. (I'm writing this blog post on Monday, folks.)  Since I have always refused to surrender to writer's block, we'll see how this writing exercise goes...

I've decided to take the word jerk and write about it in a fashion that is not negative. So, instead of discussing the myriad incarnations of jerks I have known, and continue to know, and instead of focusing on jerk as a noun, I'll focus on it as a verb.

Hmmmm. Sigh.  [thumb-twiddling and head scratching going on]

Okay, nothing comes to mind except beef Jerky--which is not a verb. FYI, I've only tasted it once and didn't much care for it. On the drive north from Missoula, Montana to Glacier State Park, you pass a beef jerky plant that claims its beef jerky is world-famous. Hard to imagine.

What IS beef jerky? Why would anyone want to eat something that's called jerky?

If I haven't lost you and you've read this far, the reason I continued with this exercise is to prove that writer's block doesn't have to exist. Yes, I just wrote complete drivel--and I bet that's a word my friend Bill Kirton would use on his blog - he's literary and likes certain types of words, of which drivel is likely one. I did, however, spit out my word count and educated you about the beef jerky plant and my friend Bill, whose most recent blog post is undoubtedly more entertaining than mine.

If I've lost you, then you're not reading this, probably don't care about beef jerky OR me, and haven't benefited from the exercise. I guess you can't tell me it sucks then, eh?

Well, I may be a Jerk with a capital "J," but I hope I got you thinking about writer's block. It doesn't have to exist. Writing rubbish (another Bill word) is better than writing nothing. Besides, my mind has already jumped onto a terrific topic for the letter "P," so there!

2 comments:

  1. That's a helluva lot to write about jerk! No, no writer's block for you. Hope it "jerks" you into action to write more!

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