Writer's Block

The blank page on her screen lights up her hands, her right pointer finger tapping impatiently on the keyboard. Her tired face reflects back as she stares at the blinking cursor, imagining it mocking her for having nothing to say. She can almost hear it ticking like a timer, counting down as the deadline approaches. Tick… tick… tick….

She has so many things piling up on her to-do list: answering emails, folding the laundry, putting the dishes away, picking up groceries, scheduling appointments. But still, she sits at her desk, tapping, typing, and deleting again and again and again, pausing every once in a while, waiting for inspiration to hit. All she wants to do is write, yet her page remains blank. Music softly streams through her speakers and a song comes up that she doesn’t like. Next. This one is better. Okay, focus. She briefly wonders if she should just turn it off, if it is a distraction, but remembers the reason she turned it on in the first place: her neighbor is having a large tree cut down, and the noisy chainsaws and woodchippers were even more distracting.

Frustration knits her eyebrows together and her shoulders are pulled tight with tension. She releases a long sigh and rolls her shoulders. I need to stand up and move around. Maybe some fresh air will help. As she walks to the kitchen, she massages a knot in her right shoulder blade, trying to push the blinking cursor from her mind. She pours herself another cup of coffee and stands on her back porch, watching the neighbor’s tree come down limb by limb. It was an ugly tree, but she will miss the shade it provided in the bright mornings. The chainsaw screams as it cuts into a new branch, causing a headache to bloom behind her eyes. She waves to her neighbor and walks back inside, even more agitated than before.

She paces her living room and considers how she has always been proud of her talent. “I’m a writer,” she would tell people. “I love to write.” So why can’t I think of anything to write about now? She ponders about how she recently realized that the only writing she was doing now was for work. All she has written for years are different renditions of the same words over and over in reports for clients, tweaked slightly to meet their needs. That’s not talent. That’s copying and pasting standard text that the client will just skim over and then argue with her about later.

All she ever wanted was to be a writer, but school and work took her in a different, less creative direction. But she knows that in order to actually write something meaningful, she needs to open up her mind and let the words flow through her fingertips and find their place on a page. It used to be that when she was writing, the world around her would disappear and she would make the images playing in her head come to life on paper. She wants to get that lost in her words again. She wants her words to shock people, to make them laugh, maybe even cry. She wants to make people feel something.

And yet her page remains blank, the cursor a steady flicker, waiting for her to do something.

Don’t overthink it. I just need to focus. She sits back down at her desk and lights a vanilla scented candle, listening to the slight crackle as the wooden wick burns. She inhales deeply and lets the vanilla warm her senses, then turns back to her computer and rests her hands on the keyboard. Her fingertips twitch as they move along the keys, looking for the right combination of words. Tapping, typing, and deleting. What a vicious cycle.

What should I make for dinner tonight? Her mind is wandering again. It’s 12:37pm, why am I worrying about dinner? I haven’t even had lunch yet. She walks back into the kitchen, her mind stuck on potential characters. Possible storylines float through her head as she places a pot of water on the stove to boil. The click-click-click of the stove igniting is just background noise in the tangle of her thoughts as she moves through the motions of preparing her lunch – noodles with butter, parmesan, and red pepper flakes. The same as yesterday. I really need to go to the store. Later.

As she returns to her desk, she notices a red notification bubble on her screen: a message from her boss asking her to send out a few client invoices. She lets her mind focus on this one mundane task, and when she is done, she re-opens her blank page and the cursor is still there, still mocking her with every blink. A notification dings on her phone, and she lets the distraction take her eyes away from the blank page. She mindlessly scrolls social media while she eats lunch, silently chuckling at reels that she forwards to her friends. She ignores the cursor blinking in her peripheral view.

Half an hour drags by, and she forces herself to put the phone down. She stares back at the blank page on her screen, her reflection still looking as tired as ever. She lets out a frustrated sigh, cursing the writer’s block that gridlocks her mind. And as she drums her fingers against the keyboard, inspiration finally hits. This. This is my story. This is what I’m going to write about.

And she does. Her fingers start to work, rapidly tapping on the keys, this time without deleting. She watches the cursor move across the page, guiding the words that are quick to take its place, and she begins: “The blank page on her screen lights up her hands, her right pointer finger tapping impatiently on the keyboard. Her tired face reflects back as she stares at the blinking cursor, imagining it mocking her for having nothing to say. She can almost hear it ticking like a timer, counting down as the deadline approaches. Tick… tick… tick…”