Coffee and a Muffin  What Every Student Needs to Know: How to
Beat Writer's Block  I hate this. This blank piece of paper
staring back at me, mocking me. Meanwhile there's a deadline
dangling over me like Damocles' sword, looming closer and
closer. I should have e-mailed my editor long ago and told him
there was no way I could finish this article on time. But now
it's way too late. He's expecting it. And I can't just call him
up at the last minute and say I haven't even started working on
it. I'm such a failure.  I continue my futile attempts as I
visit my blind, 90-year-old great-aunt. She keeps referring to
this article as my "homework." Makes sense. Many people first
experience—I shudder to even use the term—"writer's block" as
students, according to a new book on the subject by a
neurologist who teaches at Harvard Medical School, Alice W.
Flaherty. It's something of a cross between a scientific paper
on brain chemistry and a memoir, although the title, The
Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Bl