On Slate, Jessica Winter meditates on Ralph Ellison, Truman Capote, and the difference between writer’s block and procrastination. Joan Acocella wrote about those awful blocks, too; not entirely tangentially, John Lahr wrote movingly about stage fright.

Donald Barthelme’s narrator in “The Dolt” saved me from the anxious swirl that might have prevented my writing this headline, or indeed this post at all. It’s true, even “bloggers” can have blocks! If they were only alphabet blocks, then we’d really be in business.