When Ernest Hemingway faced the existential crisis that he couldn’t write anymore, he blew his brains out. When Fran Lebowitz realized she couldn’t write anymore, she simply devolved to what she loved the most anyway, which apparently was smoking cigarettes and talking to people. Both managed to maintain mystiques beyond their years of fame, and while both served as mentors to my own scribbling within certain spans of time in my life, neither suicide nor gregariousness presented themselves as ultimatel paths for my own development and destiny.

   As it turned out, Fran Lebowitz was the only one of the two I could meet and commiserate with. Sometime in the early 2000’s I was offered the plum freelance assignment of interviewing Ms. Lebowitz upon the occasion of her first new book in 20 years. I was gobsmacked by the assignment, unaware I would be approaching Lebowitz fully ensconced in the very throes of what had morphed from mere writer’s block into what she herself would later term “writer’s blockade.” Needless to say the interview never took place.

   I’ve never actually experienced writer’s block, though I am sure I’ve attracted readers over the years who’ve wished I had. What I’ve experienced is more like writer’s floodplain: an outpouring of words, sentences and paragraphs that, over the decades, know no boundaries and must simply be endured until they recede. (Fran’s editor offered it was her overriding reverence for the written word that blocked her. In my case it would be my utter disregard for the reverence of the written word that drives me to spew them out as if from a PEZ dispenser.)

 (Fran’s editor offered it was her overriding reverence for the written word that blocked her. In my case it would be my utter disregard for the reverence of the written word that drives me to spew them out as if from a PEZ dispenser.)

   I was once presented with a transparent lexan cube with the inscription WRITER’S BLOCK imprinted within one of its sides. I accepted it both ways: as an ironic statement that I never had actually experienced it, and as a material inducement, perhaps, that I might soon thankfully consider and embrace it as Fran Lebowitz had.

   And it was with that sense of irony that I carried it to her performance in San Diego this past week. I didn’t hold much hope of getting it signed, primarily because I didn’t believe a sharp-edged block of hard plastic would be viewed by theater security more as a projectile than a tchotchke to be signed. And were I to convince security that it was irony I was pursuing not violent revenge, there’d still be the small matter of getting it in front of Fran and her seeing the amusing irony, and her not choosing to enact violent revenge on me with it.

   None of that came to pass, as the accompanying photo attests. Fran actually chuckled when I presented it to her. It occurs to me I might have created a very valuable and unique piece of historical artifact: an actual writer’s block signed by the queen of writer’s block. Something akin to owning the shotgun Hemingway used on himself, though not as dark – unless you’re a writer.

   I’m also sufficiently superstitious that it’s possible I might have created a curse on my own writing. An evil charm of plastic conjured to life by Fran’s autograph. While I’d love the irony, I’d hate actually contracting writer’s block for the first ti…