The Thinking Part

TW: Writer’s block, and mild swearing (caused by the writer’s block).

“This is going to suck,” I involuntarily announce. Immediately, I wince at the discreet (and not-so-discreet) glares I get from the quiet patrons around me. Shit!

The northwest side of the library is congested with people. This section of the branch seems to be the quietest, or it is the ambience offered by its floor-to-ceiling windows, allowing the sun to luminate the room and warm up the cushioned community chairs and study desks, that make it feel more peaceful than the rest of the building. The view out the windows is mundane, nothing special; it is a crossroads, a trio of stop signs directing traffic on some busy surface streets in a small neighborhood. There are people walking along, cyclists zooming by, eucalyptus and oak trees swaying and failing to hold onto their leaves. 

Each moving piece with its own story, I lament, watching from a small study desk in the far corner. Everyone has a story but me, I groan internally.

Around me are chairs filled by seemingly concentrated people, and I can’t help but wonder what is plaguing their mind, wonder if it is at all the same for them as it is for me. 

The person in front of me is taking a child development quiz for school. I’m surprised, mostly because of his age, I suppose, but I am also intrigued. Me too, me too, I think, a part of me wanting to share my love for child development with him. Ask him what he’s taking, what school he’s studying at, or if he needs any help. By the looks of it, he got several of the answers wrong, and is reviewing the correct answers before utilizing his second attempt. 

The man across from me hasn’t moved; his headphones secure him to his laptop, which I presume is still playing that Youtube video I saw him watching when I walked past him earlier. There’s a young woman behind him, spending more time on her phone than working on her open computer. I saw her outside earlier gossiping and giggling with a friend, and I wonder if that is who is distracting her from the blank open Word document.

All of this is my massive distraction from the fact that I am not doing what I came here to do. A thousand words feels like a bazillion.

I have several Word documents open, four actually. Three of them are tarnished with about three hundred lazy words endeavoring to become a story, and the other is blank, waiting for me to type out another awful and horrific beginning to nothing. I am listening to autumn jazz, hoping the soothing instrumental will help stimulate my fingers across the keyboard, like it usually does, but today it is only making me yawn. 

A quote I heard a while ago comes to mind, about how staring at a blank page for hours is the exact thing that makes you a writer. Then, a story about a young girl whose mother asked her if she wanted to be a writer when she grew up, to which the little girl said, “I want to do the thinking part, but not the writing part.” At that, I mentally raise my hand in agreement with the wise youngling. Me too.

Part of me thinks I cannot come up with a story because I don’t want to let go, that I am still holding onto the stories I wrote in the last few weeks. They had poured directly out of my heart and soul, and I am scared they will be forgotten, become old news, if I relinquish another. I am scared to leave them behind. Writing something new feels like I am doing just that.

Another part of me knows what’s coming next is going to be absolute shit. It kind of happens that way when you’re a writer, an amateur one, anyway. A successful streak is called a streak for a reason. 

I am tempted to refresh my web browser page again; it’s become a nervous tick. Whenever I am not being productive at the keyboard, I click, click, click, and hope an idea will reveal itself the way a refreshed page is born anew. This time I stop my cursor before the click. It’s been almost two hours of this, starting a story, hating it (but not enough to delete it because...Just in case), clicking on my browser, then opening a new blank document. 

They say you can convince your brain you’ve had a good night’s sleep, even if you didn’t, and it will improve overall brain function as if you actually did sleep well. I try it: I have a great idea. I am full of ideas. 

Crickets. Well, not exactly. But really stupid ideas sometimes sound like annoying crickets.

I force myself to start with one of them. Get the awful ideas out, and maybe something better will arise.

The first story, which is pukingly awful, is about two teenage girls devising a plan to make some boy who wronged them fall in love with one of them so they could break his heart. In the end, the girl falls in love with the guy. It’s an overdone and cliché trope, but it is my life, and I’ve been listening to a lot of Louyah lately, which has made me feel quite romantic. I definitely stop it there at about three hundred and forty four words. I hate myself just a little bit more for even allowing the idea to live past one sentence.

Next, I go for the funny. A husband and wife stuck in the back of their daughter’s trunk, somehow having locked themselves inside after spying on her and her new boy friend (emphasis on the space between “boy” and “friend”). The wife and husband banter plays out hilariously in my head. I even consider adding a piece to the puzzle where the two of them try to get a little stoned in the middle of their shenanigans. The whole idea feels like something out of Modern Family, and it makes me giddy. But I spend almost an hour trying to make sense of the plot: how did they get in the back of her trunk without her noticing; how would they get out without keys; car alarms; the parents’ lie to their daughter about where they would be… I can’t make it work in my head. One hundred and seventy four words, and I’m already lost in my own story. 

I consider writing about God. Ugh. Though not my favorite topic, it’s an easy one since everyone has their own idea about Him, It, whatever. There’s no right or wrong when it comes to God, no answers really need explaining. If God were stuck in the trunk of a car, God could literally do anything about it. I think about God’s followers, and how easy a devoted and brain-washy type character would be fun to write about, especially aside its starkest opponent, an atheist. An LDS man and an atheist walk into a bar… An LDS man and an atheist are the only two who survived the war and now have to protect the architectural plans for God’s new temple… I lose interest before I even compose a first line. 

My time at the library is almost up and the deadline is tomorrow. I am annoyed with myself for not having a better grasp on this yet, but I try to not beat myself up. Negativity is the death of creativity. I tell myself, I got the wheels rolling, and a break will give my brain the leniency to be free flowing and loopy and silly. All of those things are constructive in writing. 

I pack up my computer, and make my way to my car. I give my mind permission to think of anything else. Then, of course, as I am sitting in traffic, I manage to actually think about something else – texting my dad back about an upcoming holiday trip wherein which an estranged uncle of mine might attend – when the idea comes to me. 

I’ll have to research how planes crash… (because obviously I’m going to kill the MC). 

The beginning paragraph is writing itself in my head, flooding through the gates, and I am infuriated that this is happening now, away from my computer. I try repeating the lines in my head over and over so they aren’t lost in the trade winds of my brain and gone forever. 

Holidays aren’t my favorite, but I know them. I know the drama, and all its moving parts. That’s a story I could write, I think. It might be a shit idea, but at least now I’ve got a plan.