Creative apathy

I don’t tend to get writer’s block per se, but I will confess to the occasional case of severe apathy. No matter how well/badly things are going, there are days when I just can’t get excited about deadlines, sales, market stats or anything else book-related. All I want to do is watch bad TV and sulk.

This is probably healthy and normal, but there is a little voice in my head that panics. If I’m not writing, is this the beginning of the end? The departure of the muse? The slide into irrelevance? *Gasp* will the page police bang on the door and demand to see that day’s production?

Do I care? Some days, not so much. And, if I leave it alone, in less than a week I’m banging at the keyboard again—sulk over, moxy back in gear. What causes these lapses? Rebellion is probably just a sign that vacation-time is overdue. Cure? Take a mini-vacation. Apathy might have something to teach us.

The best thing to do, in my opinion, is to indulge. Do nothing. Watch television. Read trashy magazines. Paint toenails. Get well and thoroughly bored. It could be considered research. For instance, in my last bout of indolence I learned:
· That there is a new crackled trend in nail polish that looks vaguely like a zombie disease
· That a hat that isn’t a hat is called a fascinator
· That according to a 2009 study, women are more accurate at hammering nails than men are
· And that goji berries taste kind of like soap
. Women are most likely to win an argument with a man at 3:00 pm

Priceless information. No, really. And if wading through gems like that is the alternative, I’m way more than ready to get back to work.

The question is how many of the factoids above can be used in a book. Better yet, a single paragraph …