Creative Minds

Their hands were shaking when they sat down at their desk. The new notebook was lying there, the pages still perfectly white, no ink splatter destroying its pureness. 

It had been a while since they sat down at their desk, eager to move the pen over the pages.

  It had been too long.

  Too long to remember how it worked. How to get words onto the paper in front of them. 

  The chair was creaking under them. They stood up, stretched out their fingers, their arms. Glared at the chair. Like that stupid, old chair was the root of all their problems. 

  But there was this idea in their mind, this idea that had been there for weeks now, refusing to leave. It was like a singular flickering light in a long corridor, impossible to ignore.

  They knew it would be hard, coming back to writing after years of ignoring it. They bought a new notebook even. To be prepared. Like a new notebook would help. Like it would make them forget about why they stopped in the first place.

 Tea, they thought. They did always work better with a hot drink next to them. 

  They returned twenty minutes later, a cup in their hand. 

 Sat down at the desk. 

  Stared. 

  And stared.

 The air was terrible in their room, so they stood up to open the window.

  Better, they thought. They tried to remember what else they liked to do. How they used to get themselves in the mood for writing. 

 Maybe some music would help.

  They pulled out their phone and scrolled through it, trying to find the perfect playlist that would help them write. They hummed along to the music, smiling when they recognised one of the songs.

  But they weren’t sitting down to listen to music. They were here to bring their thoughts to paper. To somehow clear their mind of the idea that had been bugging them for weeks. To get rid of the itch in their fingers every time they saw an empty notebook and a pen.

 They picked up the pen. 

 Spun it around.

 Once.

 Twice. 

  A snack, they always used to have a snack with them when they wrote. Maybe they should go out and buy something. Carrots and Hummus maybe. They wondered if they still had any in their fridge.

 They stood up, walked into the kitchen, opened the fridge, only to see that there were some carrots and hummus and even half a cucumber left.

 Another twenty minutes before they finally sat down again.

  The chair was still squeaking, but they decided to ignore it. 

  It was time to write.

 Now.

 The sun was already setting and they would need to wake up early tomorrow. So the time to write was now. 

 But the more they thought about writing, the less they wanted to pick up the pen. Maybe it was fear. Maybe they were afraid of failing. Maybe they were afraid that they couldn’t do it anymore. Not in the way they used to do it. 

 They turned around in their chair to look at the bookcase. Look at the two books standing there, their name on the spine. The bold letters almost seemed to be mocking them. 

 Look at what you did. Look at what you can’t do anymore. 

 They wanted to take the books and throw them at the wall, but of course, it wasn’t the book’s fault. It was their own fault, for stopping. 

 For not replying to their readers anymore. 

 For giving up. 

 It was the comments. All the comments they had received. There had been nice ones, of course.

 I loved this! Please tell me there’s more!

  This book changed my life!

  But the bad ones always stood out. 

  They cried when they received their first one.

 I’ve never wanted to burn a book as much as I do this one. 

 And the comments like that just kept piling up. 

 So they stopped.

 Stopped writing. Stopped reading the comments. Stopped thinking about their books altogether. 

  But it messed with them. Even more than the comments had messed with their head. They wanted to write. Wanted to flex their creative muscles. 

 Needed to. 

  They needed to write. 

 They stretched their arms. Their fingers. Their back. 

 Clicked the pen.

  Once.

 Twice. 

 Set it down on the paper. 

  And wrote the first sentence. 

 It was almost like a weight lifted off their chest. 

 And then they couldn’t stop. They kept writing and writing and writing until their eyes burned and it was dark outside.

  Their watch showed two-thirty AM when they crawled into bed. Hands stained with ink, eyelids heavy. They were exhausted. But they felt good. Relieved. Revived.

  For the first time since they put their pen down all that time ago they felt good. They felt like they had achieved something. 

They woke up before the sun rose, woke up because their mind had been bugging them. Begging them to continue writing. 

 So they sat back down in front of the notebook that was now bent and full of ink splotches.

Less intimidating. 

 They didn’t need snacks or drinks this time. 

 They didn’t even care about the creaking chair.

 No, they picked up the pen, their eyes still heavy with sleep, and set it back down on the notebook. They continued where they had left off, without even thinking about it.

  And when their alarm rung, telling them to get ready for work, it was like being ripped from a dream. 

 Even at work, and during the drive to work, they couldn’t stop thinking about their story. Couldn’t stop thinking about the idea in their head.

 They had never felt this way about a story before, not even with the stories they had published. 

 It was hard for them to concentrate at work, their mind kept circling back to their story. 

 And when they got back home it was like they had never left. 

 Like there had never been a time they stepped away from writing. 

Weeks and weeks passed, but still, they sat down to write every chance they got. Nearly ever day. 

 They wrote and wrote and edited. 

 And then even later, when the seasons had already changed, they were ready to share it. 

 They reached out to some of their old readers, and most of them had been glad to help.

 And their positive comments almost, almost, made it easier to share their book with the world. 

 And this time they promised themselves that whatever happened, they couldn’t stop. Not again. 

  Never again.