Here is the story I ended up writing for creative writing when I could not think of anything.
I have nothing. I am not a student. I am not a writer. My grades will back me up on this. I am not a teenager; therefore I am not a novice. My actions and my age prove otherwise. I am not new to the art. I have remained and have been claimed the victim of this monster.
Writer’s block. It has chewed me up and spit me out, as if my work was the fat on a steak compared to others. Now I sit, confined on the worn out bed designated to me in my mother’s home. This not my home. I do not live here. I live in an eternal void of words. My movements here are not uninfluenced. As with my writing, my breathing only continues when I am not thinking about it. When I am not thinking about how, somehow, I am not doing it correctly.
I am sitting between a pile of books, made to improve my writing and my general knowledge of the president-elect. At this point, my career is not unlike Obama; well known without experience.
My purse, full of unfinished homework, is at the foot of the bed. Strike that. To say the homework is unfinished is to imply I have started, which could not be further from the truth. I am underneath a shield of blankets, edged by a limp pillow and embarrassingly unfaded stuffed animals.
My teddy bear is an editor watching me closely as I work. Its beady eyes remind me of my self-imposed deadlines.
The radio is playing. It spews out motivational lyrics that are barely noticed. My sister did not make the attempt to turn it off on her way out. Neither did she close the door, allowing me to hear my father’s big screen. It is playing the family form of entertainment; another movie. In addition to his smoke, I have inhaled more second hand cinema in the past year than all my previous ones combined.
I finally give in, get up and close the door. Just as I sit back down, my sister opens it, entering the room. Once she is settled in, my mother’s voice can be heard announcing that we need to make ourselves dinner. I get up, placing my notebook down. I slowly walk toward the bathroom when my sister jumps in front of me.
I stop. I turn to see that she, once again, left the light on. I smack the switch as if it were a pestering fly. In the darkness, I scratch the back of my right knee, a recent area of interest. I swear, someone is shooting me up in the middle of the night.
The injection slows my thought process, causing last night’s inspiration to turn into today’s forgotten masterpiece. I rapidly devour my meal as if I was starving and return to my fortress of forgetfulness.
I slink back into the darkness. Without turning in the light, I manage to walk through my room without stepping on anything. Not thinking of the pile on my bed, I jump back onto it and soon regret it.
Instead of correcting the pain, I merely pass out from worrying and lack of sleep.
In my dream, I am sitting in the middle of a classroom. My hand is starting to cramp. I am seen furiously scribbling away. Like a contestant of a pie eating contest, my hand snatches each paper on by one until there is nothing left.
Soon, I run out of paper. I am an addict and the only cure is more parchment. The needle that has been inserted into me at night seems to have the opposite effect when I am unconscious.
I compose lyrics in my arm, transforming myself into a true work of human art. My pant leg quickly turns into a meter length scroll in which I write a detailed analysis on the history of fashion. My left hand is a haiku. My right hand is an epitaph on Emily Dickinson.
My eyebrows arch together to form an onomatopoetic symphony. The student next to me, suddenly coming into view, turns over and whispers “Wee! Kerplunk!” The teacher hushes him.
The ink flows out of my pen, like water out of a fountain. It is endless, for by now it surely should have run out. Instead, it continues to scrawl illegible characters on any surface it comes into contact with.
Suddenly, I run out of surface on my person to write anymore. I run to the front of the classroom and grab a piece of chalk. The chalk, acting on its own accord, produces work reminiscent of Shakespeare, in the same ‘Where art thou?” sentence structure.
The board fills itself with vowels and consonants. My hand, that is, my epitaph, cramps. Pausing, I sit myself down. Amy hands are flying. They are in the act of writing without materials.
The only way I can cope is by beginning to write out loud.
“Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, lived a princess. This princess’s favorite hobby was riding her white stead, Lancelot. One day the princess arrived to the stable to find that…”
Finally, the teacher turns around, realizing what I was doing.
“Lindsay, what do you think you are doing?”
“Writing,” I respond without thinking. “Lancelot was missing. What could the princess do without her poor Lancelot? She walked back inside, approaching her maid…”
“Lindsay, would you please be quiet so the rest of the class could write? You are being very distracting,” she urged.
“I thought the point of this class was to write. I’m writing. The princess asked the maid if she had any idea where Lancelot could have gone. The maid did not know.”
“Lindsay! You are supposed to write, but others need to write as well. You need to be quiet as a mouse.”
“That doesn’t make sense at all. Mouses do not have thumbs; they cannot write. How could you possibly compare me to a mouse?”
“Fine. Could you just do your work out in the hall? This classroom is a sanctuary for all writers.”
“I’ll go as long as you stop speaking in similies.”
“That was a metaphor.”
“Whatever.”
I take myself and my ideas out into the hall. I have no pen and no paper. Just me and my thoughts, sitting quietly.
The cramp in my hand intensifies. A surge of pain runs through every syllable of my being. I let out a shout of pain and the teacher comes out of the classroom.
‘I thought I told you to be quiet!”
Suddenly, I wake up, finding that my pain is real. Why didn’t I clear my bed before I fell asleep? Now I have a cramp on every possible part of my body. I feel as if I had been stuffed in the trunk of someone’s car and am now expected to climb out.
I place my right foot on the floor. It steps on a rubber duck, causing a loud “Quack!” to emerge.
I have an idea at the tip of my tongue. My notebook cannot be found.
I shove the pile off of my bed searching. To make sure that I remember the idea, I start to whisper to myself.
“Mean while, Lancelot happy chewed on some grass in a field nearby. He had no idea that his princess was looking for him.”
At this my sister awakes. She slowly sits up, giving me a death glare.
“What in the world are you blathering on about?” She turns, looking at the clock. “It’s three-o-clock in the morning! Are you insane?!” she shouts.
“Lancelot was let out by the princess’s step-sister, who was very jealous of the princess.”
“Hey, are talking about me?” My sister jumps out of bed. I am still trying to find my notebook, to no avail. It is unbelievable that in this entire room, I cannot find a single sheet of paper.
My sister begins to chase me around the house as I continue with my search. My father overhears this and opens his bedroom door.
“What is going on?”
“The king favored the princess and never let the evil step-sister have her way.”
Finally, I find a piece of paper. I pull out my pen and place it to the page. I pause.
“What was I saying?”
Drats, the beast has slain me again!
