Writer's Block

I tapped the blank page of the worn notebook with the tip of my ballpoint pen. The seconds ticked by. My anxiety ate me alive. I needed her to work with me.

“Please,” I tried again, but this time I didn’t hide the begging from my tone.

The folding chair squeaked as Malaya leaned back into it, kicking her feet up on the worn oak desk that sat between us. A smirk covered her face. “Sorry, Alana, no can do. I’m feeling a little shy today and my throat hurts a bit. I think I’m coming down with something.”

I breathed in a shaky inhale, trying to calm the burning rage. “You literally won’t shut up. It’s in your personality. So why don’t you talk like you want to and make my life a tad easier? I have written up to chapter 20, but I have been stuck on chapter 21 for two weeks. I just need to know what happens next. My editor needs this in 72 hours. Do you know the number of gray hairs you have given me since I started your series?”

 “You are the writer and I’m only a character in your imagination, so technically you are giving yourself gray hairs.” Leaning forward, she grabbed the notebook from in front of me. The pages fanned out as she flipped through them. She stopped on one page, squinted her smokey topaz eyes that the male lead made me spend an entire paragraph describing, and tilted her head to the side. “And are you sure that’s how the past 20 chapters should have gone? Chapter 14 feels a weird to me.”

“Oh, no you don’t!” I launched over the desk, snatching the notebook out of her hands and clutching it to my chest. “I have rewritten Chapter 14 six times. Chapter 8 became Chapter 14 and Chapter 9 became Chapter 13. Then I had to rewrite everything to make it work. Do not mess with the last twenty chapters.”

She leaned back in her chair again and shrugged. Shrugged!

“It’s not my fault you’re dealing with writer’s block.”

My palms slammed on the desk. “It literally is! You’re the main character! All I need to know is what happens next so I can finish this book and send it off to the editor. This needs to be published by the end of the month!”

“You could always push it off for 30 days.”

“I already did! You made me do that last month, and now I’m down to the wire and you still aren’t talking!”

She ran her hands down her face. “Why are you bothering me at 2 o’clock in the afternoon? We both know how this works. You spend all day stressing out about me not cooperating and then you drink a glass of wine. Right before you fall asleep, I show up and start talking. You grumble about how you’re an insomniac, but you pull out your laptop anyway and write 10,000 words.”

“That only works half the time.” My eyes narrowed on her.

“But the other half I am super compliant.”

“For the love of everything! I need sleep. Why won’t you talk at normal hours?”

“We’ll call it payback.”

“For what? I created you out of the depths of my imagination and brought you to life. I gave you an entire history and a love life. You are the star of my bestselling book. What more could you want?”

She scoffed, stood, and snatched my notebook again. “You killed my parents and had me adopted by a man who turned me into an experimental subject. I escaped two years ago only to be caught again by the same person who experimented on me. Then I was shipped off to an island where I had to pretend that I was somebody else in order to survive. I found a man, fell in love with him, and then ran away because I loved him too much. Then I got caught by the people who experimented on me again, and now I’m captured.” Her chest was heaving by the time she stopped talking. “You can call me slightly pissed.”

“You chose to do that!” I cried. “I followed your lead on book one. If you remember correctly, I was going to have the book end with the villain showing up. You are the one that said you had to run away!”

“It’s not like I really wanted to! You gave me the childhood trauma that caused me to do all that!”

A knock sounded at the door. My head whipped to the door plastered with post-it notes. Erebus popped his head in. “Hey, sorry to interrupt, but if Malaya doesn’t want to talk, I pretty much know what’s going to happen through the whole next book.”

“Erebus, I swear I can’t deal with you right now. You have been in my head, trying to take over for the past two weeks. Your book doesn’t come out until June!”

“Yeah, well, you took Abby from me last July and I’ve been without her while you decided to stop my story and start a new series.” He glowered. “I’m a little impatient to get her back.”

“Wait a minute! You took his girl from him like you took me away from Tazi?”

“Everyone, chill. It just kind of happened that both of the female main characters got kidnapped.” I pointed at Malaya. “And what happens in your story is very different from what’s happening in his.”

Erebus crossed his arms. “Are you sure about that? A few things seem pretty similar.”

“They are different! You will find out when I write the third book in your series.” I glared. “Can you leave us? I’ll talk to you in a few weeks.”

Erebus scoffed. “That’s if I still want to talk then.” He marched out the door, slamming it on the way and causing a post-it note to float to the ground.

I groaned and I lowered my body back into the desk chair. The blasted thing was so uncomfortable, but I had to have it because it matched the ambiance. When I started writing, I thought it would be all tea and crumpets, with songbirds chirping in the distance and a slight smile on my lips. What would 18-year-old me think if I showed her the truth? It was sinking into a couch cushion with a laptop and a fifth cup of coffee, three days of no showers, and constantly arguing with the voices in your head that refused to talk.

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “What do I have to do to get you to talk, Malaya? Do I have to stay up all night while binge reading a book to get inspiration? Do I have to reread my books on plotting? Would it be better if I forced you to do what I wanted?”

She scoffed. “Well, you can try but the last time you tried to force me to talk, you wrote 7,000 words and had to delete all of it because it was plot driven and not character driven. Your words, not mine.”

“What are my options?” I questioned with a glare.

“We can flip a coin.”

“No, not this again. Why can’t you just be reasonable?”

“Because you made me perfectly flawed, slightly annoying, mostly loveable, and more stubborn than you. Plus, you decided not to plot this book and pants it.”

“That’s because every single time I plot a book, you guys decide to throw the whole thing out and do something different anyway!”

“It sounds like you have problems.”

“Yeah, mostly the fact that my imaginary friends aren’t talking to me and therefore I can’t write the next book in your series.” I glowered.

She pulled the coin out of her pocket and rubbed it between her fingers. “So, do you want heads or tails?”

“I want you to talk.”

“Think fast! Heads or tails?” The coin flew out of her fingers and into the air.

“Heads!” I cried.

She snatched the coin out of the air and slapped it on the back of her hand. She peeked underneath her hand and then looked up at me with a grin. “It’s tails. Good luck with writer’s block! I’ll see you at three am!” she called as she waltzed out of the door.

I took deep, calming breaths. This is going to be fine. Maybe I could find a side character’s point of view to write from. Would that work for the climax? Ugh! No, it had to be her point of view.

My forehead hit the desk in front of me. The door squeaked open. I rolled my head to the side.

“Hey, are you sure you don’t want me to come in and talk?” Erebus asked from the door. “I have a plot twist that’s going to blow your mind.”

It was better than nothing. I groaned and motioned him in. “At least one of you is willing to talk.”

He plopped down on the chair and his eyes twinkled. “For now.”