Blocked?

He sat under his favorite tree by the river, enjoying the cool late summer breeze as it passed over the water. This was HIS place - his getaway for a bit of solitude and a few minutes away from everyday distractions. Yet he sat with pencil in hand, unable to break the block. The blank page seemed to mock his inability to fill it...

A number of years ago, I was the "he" in the brief scene above. Writer's block had morphed into full-blown writer's constipation. Every project I was working on sat unfinished. The time I set aside for writing would come and go with nothing but blank pages, or maybe a few scribbled out sentence fragments. So I ventured to my favorite riverside spot, figuring it would inspire fresh work. It did not.

I arrived home dejected, and suddenly was hit with a bright idea. I would break the block by crafting a story ABOUT writer's block! Genius, right?

Umm, clearly that didn't work either, since I didn't get any farther than what you see above.

I was rummaging through some old scrap work and journal entries looking for prompts or ideas for a contest piece, and discovered the little snippet from years ago. I smiled, feeling good that I'm not suffering through the same struggle now.

Then I reflected a moment. The novel I set out to write many years ago still sits in a dusty binder, no closer to finished than it was eight years ago when I set it aside. The novel project that "replaced" it? Stormed along at a breakneck pace - then stalled. It hasn't been touched in close to a year. Frankly, the only long piece I've made progress on began its life as a 1000-1200 word short story for a contest.  It quickly outgrew that, but I have no idea where it's going to end up - the story just keeps pouring out.

Meanwhile, things that I want to work on, like other contest pieces, are a battle.

Maybe I smiled too soon.

This is where it started........

My journey as a writer began with a few simple sentences scrawled in a notebook; I had no idea what the sentences would become, but the words spoke to me. Now, several years later, those words form the first twelve sentences of this post - the very beginnings of my in-progress novel, that may someday actually be complete. The story is geared toward teens.

INTRODUCTION

The searing pain shot through him like a lightning bolt, instant and ferocious in its intensity as he crumpled to the ice. A pain that blinded him to his surroundings and seemingly stopped time. Then, nothing. No sensation at all, complete silence. He was, for a moment, deaf to the throng of people beginning to surround him, panicked and screaming, as he lay there in a strange sort of peace. The siren approaching outside the rink ended the silence, as angry shouts broke the peace.


“What a cheap shot!”

“That dirty son-of-a………”

“Oh, God….look at his leg!”


A large fight had broken out several yards away, as a sea of dark blue jerseys attempted some sort of retribution for their fallen teammate. Striped shirts intertwined and whistles blew frantically as the referee and linesmen struggled to break up the brawl; meanwhile the frightened trainer shouted for the paramedics to bring a backboard and stretcher. The voices and chaos blended into a sea of white noise as he faded in and out of consciousness…………..

He awoke with a start, growling in anger and soaked in sweat, the recurring dream having interrupted his sleep for the fourth night in a row.

“Dammit, what do I gotta do to get a solid night’s sleep?” he muttered to himself. “Practice starts in three months – how am I gonna be ready if I can’t get a good night’s rest before training?”

He rolled out of bed, rubbing sleep from his eyes as he winced in pain. The softly glowing light on the alarm clock read 4:42 AM as he exited the bedroom and limped down the hallway toward the kitchen. Grimacing again at the pain that just wouldn’t go away, he stepped through the doorway and flipped on the light, squinting in the sudden brightness.

After pouring a glass of milk, he sat at the kitchen table with his head in his hands, trying to forget the nightmare that continued to plague him. The doubts began to creep in again……..was all of this really worth it? He gritted his teeth as he slammed his hand down on the table.

“It’s absolutely worth it……..I’m coming back from this!”