The Struggling Writer Paradox

"I wish I could," muttered the young man.

"I know you can," said Jenna, kissing him gently on the forehead, "I will be back by 5 o clock cupcake, I can't wait to see what you have got."

He muttered something nonchalantly as Jenna bid him goodbye for a day out with her friends. He had a whole day to himself but he couldn't help his helplessness. He had been negligent about his writing for four years, working hard on his science at Stanford. And now he was finding it simply impossible to start writing again. He felt his writing career was finished, all his lofty goals of becoming the New York Times Bestselling Author were struggling on the loft of his small rented apartment. 

Jenna, his sweet, ever encouraging girlfriend, felt he still had it in him to become a great author. She had planned her friends day out so that he could get a day to brainstorm ideas. She believed that lack of time was the only thing that had stopped him from writing great stories. What she didn't understand however was that he just wasn't able to think. The author in him felt dead within. It seemed as if his brain had rewired itself to think about science and science alone. 

As sure as he was about his dead writing career, he didn't want to disappoint Jenna. He took out his laptop and opened his word processor, timidly hoping that a blank white screen would force him to start pouring his ideas. He slowly began typing as the first ideas dropped in. Halfway through a short love story, his dolefulness took over and he was back to simply staring again. He felt lost and helpless. He spent another three hours, writing and rewriting more short stories. He felt the quality of his writing dwindling with each passing minute. He printed out all the pages he had written and stared at them with disgust. 

"It is over," he muttered to himself.

He closed the writing program and switched to his research study on time travel. Even though his writing career was a dud, he was growing into a brilliant scientist - only he and Jenna knew how close he was to cracking the secret of time travel and that was a joy unlike any other. He was so engrossed in his time travel research that he gasped in horror when a car pulled over on the drive away some four hours later. He knew Jenna would be devastated if she found out that he hadn't written anything. He half heartedly contemplated showing her the dumb short stories he had written but he just couldn't do it. He stapled them in the middle of some of his research papers and threw them onto the loft. 

Jenna walked into the room expectantly with a smile.

"So?" She asked looking around the room almost hoping he would pull out a novel. 

He just shook his head dejectedly. Her smile faded instantly. She pulled him into a hug. 

"That's okay. You must have definitely tried. Don't worry. Just keep trying," she said patting him on his back.

He nodded but felt more depressed. There was no way he was going to be able to write again. For the first time, he hated the fact that he got admitted into Stanford. If only he had stayed in the past....

"That's it!" He shouted.

"Huh?" Jenna asked startled. 

He smiled stupidly to himself. He opened up his laptop and started working vigorously on his time travel equations. There was no way he was going to write again but that didn't mean he couldn't publish his novels. He just needed to finish his time machine and bring back his past self into the present. 

On a Sunday, six months later, his moods were no better. He was more depressed than he had been six months back. The funny part was that he had solved the time dilation equations and had a working theory that could help him travel back in time. What was funny was that despite having the equation, there was no way he was going to make the machine to bring back his past self. It seemed almost stupid that it had escaped his brilliant mind that he couldn’t afford the risk of bringing his past self to the present as it would trigger a paradox and destroy his reality.

The paradox was simple: if he made the time machine and went back to the past and brought his fifteen year old self to the present, then the past self would cease to exist. That would mean he would never get into Stanford, he would never make a time machine and theoretically he wouldn’t be able to exist. The simplicity of the paradox made him feel stupid. His apparent lack of creativity only made his moods worser. Jenna had grown tired of asking him to attempt writing. He had rewritten his short stories multiple times but he was too frustrated and out of focus to even read and validate their sanctity. His mood swings in the past six months had taken a toll on him and he fell sick. He was unable to think of anything and his mind was squirming with thoughts about his impending failures. He felt unfit to live life. Yet he wanted to live. The life of an agitated writer is hard to describe. It is like being stuck in a wormhole knowing you can’t come out but you also don’t want to go to the other side.

In a few days, he had been admitted to the hospital and the doctors had prescribed their usual pills, telling him that he was stressed.

“Wow, I didn’t know that,” he muttered to himself sarcastically. Jenna visited him in the hospital. It was a Monday and he hated it when he was unable to go to work.

“Be a good boy. I love you and I will be back in the evening. Promise me that you will sleep and not think too much,” Jenna said before hurriedly leaving for work.

As much as he tried to sleep, it just wasn’t coming his way. He stared endlessly at the wall above him, wondering what he was going to do. Disturbing thoughts corroded his mind and he decided he just needed a dose of sleeping pills. He was about to press the button to call the attendant when the door opened slowly.

“Good I was about to call you. Can you...” he stopped abruptly on looking at the man in front of him. A tall, slender six foot tall man stood near the door looking at him curiously. He wore a grey tee and looked quite fit. First streaks of grey were appearing on his hair, he was considerably well shaved and looked like some rich dude.

“I assume you’re in the wrong room,” he said, unable to take his eyes off the tall man. Something about him was captivating, something was a bit off.

“I am in the right room,” the man replied in a gentle voice. He shuddered. He suddenly understood who he was and it frightened and excited him at the same time.

“You are...” he said pointing his finger and trembling.

The man nodded and smiled.

“You,” the man simply replied and sat on the bed beside him. He tried to get up but his fatigue prevented him. The man reassured him and patted his leg gently.

“Why? How? I don’t understand,” he muttered breathlessly.

“Let’s just say I have come to motivate you a bit,” the man said.

“So my theory worked? The equations are right, aren’t they?” He said excitedly.

“Yes. The theory worked. And it was necessary to implement it, to save you from you,” said the man.

“What do you mean?”

“Just look at the future. Where do you see yourself with this sorry state of yours? Hopeless and vain, having lost all your enthusiasm, you seriously think your future could become better if you continue like this?” The man asked with a hint of anger in his voice.

“No but I don’t have a choice.”

“You are capable. You can change your future even now. I have come to help you,” said the man.

“Are you going to alter the future? Make me healthy?” He asked childishly.

The man almost laughed.

“You will become healthy when you want to be. That’s not my job. I have come to give you something else,” said the man.

“What is it?” He asked.

The man stretched a filed set of papers towards him.

“Your next publication,” the man said.

“No way! You’re kidding! You wrote this for me?” He asked in disbelief. 

“I wrote it for myself,” said the man chuckling.

“Thank you, thank you,” he said, tears rolling down in happiness.

“Take it to your publisher. It will work out. You still have your creativity. Don’t forget that. I am just here to motivate you. Don’t expect me to hand over more stories. This is the last. You can and you will write your own stories from now,” said the man sternly.

“Of course,” he said, nodding his head obediently. “Alright then, I will leave,” said the man and rose to leave. “Wait!” He said as a cold realisation passed over him.

 “Yes?” The man asked.

“This is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Does that mean I have to grow up and do what you’re doing? I have to come back and gift stories to myself?” He asked.

“Of course,” replied the man reaching the door. 

“How will I find the right time to do it?” He asked. 

The man smiled.

“You will know.”

Nine years later, on a fine Sunday morning, he woke to Jenna’s gentle kisses on his forehead.

“Good morning cupcake,” she said. He smiled and wrapped his arms around her. Every morning was pure ecstasy for him. They would wake up and go on their routine jog talking about things as random as religion, nature, science, books and sex. On returning, Jenna would start cooking their breakfast while he would work on his novel. After breakfast they would head to their respective workplaces. They hadn’t thought about children yet. It didn’t perturb either of them, life was great as it was.

“What’s the plan for this Sunday?” Jenna asked.

“The same as the last,” he said chuckling. Jenna blushed.

They headed to the bath together. As he disrobed his lovely wife, she kissed him softly and passionately.

“Look at my man growing old already. I can see your first streaks of grey hair,” Jenna said looking at him. He smiled, not taking in the comment too seriously. However, the moment they stepped in front of the bathroom mirror, he stopped dead in his tracks. The face staring back at him was shockingly familiar. It was new yet painfully old. He had become the same man who had visited that hospital many years ago. He knew the time had come. He gulped as he pondered over his reflection. He had forgotten the time machine equations. He had lost its documentation over the years and had never really given it a second thought. And he had no idea what he was supposed to do regarding the manuscripts. Was he just supposed to write his own past publications and go back and give it?

“Anything wrong sweetie?” Asked Jenna.

“No no, come on,” he said, faking his smile and taking her in.

An hour later he blankly sat in front of his laptop while Jenna took to cleaning the house after a long time. He had to solve Einstein’s equations again and also write a bunch of stories for his publication.

“Honey, I want to clear the loft, can you help me with the stool?” Jenna asked. He nodded absent-mindedly and moved over to help Jenna. He helped her balance the stool while she climbed to clear the loft.

“There’s so much of unnecessary stuff here. I reckon we throw some of it out so that we can make room for anything extra,” said Jenna.

He agreed nonchalantly. Jenna started clearing the loft enthusiastically handing over waste boxes and broken gadgets to him which he placed around the room in the most untidiest way possible. Jenna looked down at him and scowled.

“How will we clear all this if you keep placing it around us like this?” She complained.

He shrugged and asked her to continue cleaning. About fifteen minutes later, Jenna handed over some dirty documents to him. He was about to throw them into a corner when his eyes caught upon the slender handwriting on top of the page.

“DAMN!” He shouted and let go of the stool, looking at the paper in disbelief. Jenna trembled and faked a fall.

“Whoa! Sorry,” he said and caught onto the stool.

“What’s that about?” She enquired.

“Can we just stop all this? Oh my god! This is unbelievable,” he said and rushed to a cleaner part of the house. He rubbed the dust of the paper. It was there, clean and clear. His solution for the Einstein equations, which he had placed all those years ago. He felt unusually pumped up. He punched his fist in the air. He knew he could deploy the time machine in almost no time. All that was left to do was to copy his own first publication from his Kindle to a handwritten document.

Two months later, his time machine was all set and deployed. Somehow one part of the logic still evaded him. If he copied his first book into the paper and handed over to his past, the paradox still existed. Who then actually wrote the first book?

 He sat down on a Sunday morning, referring to his Time Machine calculations again. He looked at the calculations in satisfaction and was about to start working on his novel copy when he saw another set of papers stapled along with the calculations. Over the past two months he hadn’t really taken a look at them as he had assumed it to be solutions for some other scientific project that he intended to go through later but he realised that they were printed. He had always handwritten his science stuff so it came as a surprise to him that he had printed material attached to the papers. He turned to the first page of the printed material.

“NO!” He shouted in disbelief and dropped the papers. His hands trembled as he stared at the papers in shock. Multiple memories struck him at once and he felt aghast at his own foolishness.

His memory went back to that Sunday morning when he had tried writing some short stories and had failed at it. He had made multiple revisions to it and before becoming sick, he had just assumed it was a lost case and had stapled it along with his time travel equations and thrown it onto the loft. He had been too lost to analyse the copies back then but the fact that he hadn’t even realised it through all these years made him laugh in disbelief.

He now knew the answer to who had written the first copy of his first book. It had been in his loft all through the years and he had never realised it.

He smiled fondly at the copy in his hand and started his time machine. He realised he never had a Writer’s Block. He had just been disappointed with himself and had lost hope. He then remembered his own words.

“Let’s just say I have come to motivate you a bit.”

As he entered into his time machine, he thought to himself,

“There was never a struggling writer. I motivated a writer who thought he was struggling by gifting him a copy of his own work!”