Documents

It was a Saturday afternoon when I found myself scrolling through my Word document history. That’s what I was doing instead of actually writing. Gosh, I had had that account for years, so it wasn’t a surprise that I found a few documents that I had long since forgotten. Most of them had really chessy titles. Curiosity getting the better of me, I clicked on the one titled “Through Space and Time”. It couldn’t be too bad, right?

            “Time travel,” I muttered, wincing at my own words. “Kristen, what were you thinking?” Oh, even worse, it was a Doctor Who fanfiction. My mind flashbacked to the age where I was obsessed with the show and writing. So, the obvious thing to do was combine the two. As I stared at the document, my teacher’s words echoed in my mind. 

            These characters aren’t yours. You’re not allowed to write about them. It’s unrealistic. 

            Still, as I read through it, I could feel the energy in the page. I could hear the Doctor’s voice when he spoke. I could hear the TARDIS landing in the middle of nowhere. I could see the Doctor wielding his sonic at a piece of word to no avail. Since I was completely obsessed with the characters, I studied their speech patterns to perfection. 

            Sighing, I clicked out of the document and went back to my story, taking a breath. You can do this, I told myself. You need to do this. Just write something Mr. Smith would like. But, I had no detailed characters, no perfect setting, and no conceivable plot. I was a writer who wouldn’t seem to write. 

I tried to start the story seven times before going back to scrolling through my history. This time, I clicked on the document titled “A Wish”. It seemed interesting enough, and the title was cute. It couldn’t hurt, right?

            “Oh, this is so much worse,” I murmured. Incorrect grammar, misspelled words, the most basic plot I had ever read. As I scrolled through the pages, my father’s words echoed in my head. 

            Are you stupid? Can’t you spell? Don’t they teach you anything in school? 

            Still, it was one of the cutest things I had ever read. Every sentence was alive even if the structure was wack. Every character seemed like a real person even though I hadn’t spelled their name correctly. Every setting was so carefully described even if I had used the most basic words in the English language. You could learn a few things. 

I winced at the thought and quit out of the document. You need to actually write, I told myself. I needed to write a short story for class, and here I was scrolling through my history instead. Procrastination!

I tried to draw an outline, but even that didn’t do anything. I had one half-baked character, a glimmer of a setting, and the vague aesthetic of a plot. Better than nothing, but I couldn’t be too basic but also not too absurd. I just had to write it. 

Instead, I found myself once again looking through my history. Maybe I’d find some ideas there. I chose a document wonderfully titled “Word”. An hour later, I was still reading that document, completely absorbed in the plot. The characters were so carefully planned down to their last names. The descriptions were so easy to picture. The story I had written a year ago had completely grabbed me and pulled me down. 

When I got to the end, I had to stifle a scream. Some lunatic had left the story at the climax of the plot, with two characters gravely injured. 

“Where’s the rest of it? I want to know what happens,” I muttered before realizing that I was the lunatic who’d abandoned the story. If you want more, you have to write it, I thought bitterly. That’s when my phone rang. 

“Hello,” I greeted. 

“Hey, Kristen. I was just wondering if you’d written your story for Mr. Smith,” my friend, Carly, said. 

“I can’t even get two sentences,” I groaned. 

“Not even a title,” she asked. 

“Not even that.” 

“Let me see if I’m getting this right. You’re experiencing writer’s block on something you haven’t even started?”

“Gosh, Carly, yes. I can’t even think of an original plot. I haven’t written anything like this in years, and I can’t think of anything for Mr. Smith.” 

“So?”

“What do you mean ‘so’? I’ve got nothing that Mr. Smith would like.” 

“That doesn’t matter,” Carly answered. 

I bit my lip. “I don’t follow.” 

My friend sighed. “I mean that you have to stop writing for Mr. Smith.”

“But, it’s his assignment,” I argued, and Carly just sighed. 

“I mean, you have to stop writing just to please him. You have to write for yourself, and everything will fall into place.” I leaned back in my desk chair and crossed my arms. She was right; I was trying to please too many people. I needed to write what I wanted to write. There was just one problem. 

“I don’t know how to do that,” I admitted. I could hear Carly humming through the phone. 

“Do you remember all those fanfictions you used to write?”

I winced. “No, please don’t remind me.”

“Yes, I will remind you because apparently that’s the only way you’re gonna get anything done,” Carly insisted. “Remember how you didn’t care who read it? You just wrote for fun. You wrote because it was what you wanted to do.” 

I sighed. “That was years ago, Carly, and I was a different person.”

“Well, maybe that’s who you need to be to write. Get in your character’s skin. Just write. If you need any more encouragement, just call me.”

“Easier said than done,” I muttered as she hung up. Still, perhaps she was right. All those years ago, I had written just because I wanted to. I wrote to please no one. I wrote because it was all I wanted to do. I wrote for myself. 

With a smile, I pulled up the blank document and cracked my knuckles. 

Let’s just to work.