Male colleague: Check this out. This woman works for a company called Pubic Lice.

*Pause*

Me: Did you just say Pubic Lice?
Male colleague: Yup.
Me: Are you sure?
Male colleague: Yes!

Cue crazy Google session which, as you can probably imagine, yielded lots of nasty results about actual pubic lice and nothing about any advertising company by that name.

Ten minutes later…

Male colleague: Oh! She’s from Publicis, not Pubic Lice! That was a typo.
Me: That’s one hell of a typo.

And there was much hysterical laughter to be had.

Case #2
I used to work in a company that had offices all over Singapore. Once, I had to send some documents to a colleague in a different office so I told her to email her office address to me.

Five minutes later, I received her email. Her office was in Tampines, but instead of Tampines, she had written Tampons in her email. No kidding. I immediately replied to the email and told her to confirm the address. She replied with the same address again, so I called her.

Me: Hey, are you sure you sent me the correct address?
Female colleague: Of course.
Me: Why don’t you check again?

*Pause*

Female colleague: Oh my god.
Me: I thought so too.
Female colleague: This is so embarrassing!
Me: Is it that time of the month? Were you thinking of your shopping list when you were writing that email? Gee.

This was followed by some TMI conversation which I’d spare you from. At the end of the chat, we both realised that I could just dispatch the documents to her through internal mail thus omitting the need for her full address. Major duh.

So boys and girls, always check your emails before you send them out, especially to complete strangers. You don’t want your typos to cause grievous bodily harm such as dying or serious internal bleeding from laughing too much, do you?

Back to the business at hand. More often than not, I find myself having some form of writer’s block, so I’ve listed down some ways that have helped and some that I’ve thought of but aren’t tested.

• Drink some wine. This helps me to relax a little and not worry so much about performance anxiety.
• Just write down whatever comes into your head. Sentences. Words. Phrases. Stick men drawings.
• Get some fresh air. Go out into your garden and hope that your cute neighbour is tanning topless.
• Drink more wine.
• Have a break. Have a Kit-Kat. Have a chat with that cute neighbour.
• Try writing somewhere other than your usual spot, like in your cute neighbour’s lap.
• Drink yet more wine.
• Take a shower. I do my thinking best in the shower.
• Instead of writing from the beginning, do it from another angle. Start in the middle, the end, anywhere.
• Change your writing instruments. If you usually use your computer or laptop, try writing with a pen, pencil, charcoal, blood etc.
• Finish your wine. By now you should be too drunk to care!

So how do you overcome writer’s block?