Some of the history's most famous, and prodigiously fluent, authors suffered temporary cessations of text: Leo Tolstoy, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, Joseph Conrad, Katherine Mansfield. It is not a sign of weakness in artists; it may just be a sign that they are taking themselves too seriously and that the nagging self-censor in their head is telling them their last two chapters/stanzas/scenes are less than Shakespearean. Some writers are a little over-precious about finding le mot juste. "You don't know what it is," groaned Gustave Flaubert to a friend, "to stay a whole day with your head in your hands, trying to squeeze your unfortunate brain so as to find a word."