. . .

There, that just about covers it. I am, at the moment, suffering through a rather specific and (apparently) individual form of writer’s block. No one seems to talk much about this type of writer’s block, which is different to the usual staring-at-a-blank-screen-or-page-itis. All the usual suspects ( , , ) have articles up on the Webs about this “normal” type of writer’s block, where you sit and stare at the page, mentally compiling to-do lists and then actually carrying out those tasks. Housework, laundry, gardening, eating – all these things seem, from the outside, doable. For me, however, no such thing is possible.

In a normal (i.e. a non-writer’s block) week, I can’t silence those damned voices in my head. They crush in from all sides, taunting me and telling me their tales, telling me to write them, to write all their stories down for the world (or the limited number of people who read my blog) to see, to feel to empathise. I simply can’t stop the stories from coming out, and I write one hundred aborted stories for every one that goes onto the blog, and out of those stories that do go out into the electronic wilderness, maybe one in ten gets held in reserve for re-writing and an eventual tilt at competitions and magazine submissions.

For the last month, however, the myriad voices have dried up to a trickle, the occasional suggestion at a story meandering through my mind. It doesn’t affect my novel The Gods, They Feast On Men (or the other three novels I’m ignoring) nor does it affect any of the short stories that I am rewriting, or the screen-play that I finished this week (hooray!) It only affects new stories. I blame this:

That’s right, that is a wall of deadlines quite literally looming over my head. And the strange thing is that it doesn’t stop me writing. I’m editing and rewriting at least five short stories, and although the work slows, it doesn’t actually stop me. I can sit beneath this monstrosity and force myself to write. The novel is trickling along at about the same pace as it always has – only new ideas are held at bay. I have since taken down the Wall of Terror TM, and so, as you would have seen, there are one or two stories a week going up, which is still less than the usual flood… How do you fight your way through writer’s block? Any suggestions?

She wandered, as though in a dream constantly on the verge of tipping into nightmare, lingering before technicolour booths promising that “EVERY CHILD WINS A PRIZE!” Dot found herself lost in her own subconscious, seeing the doppelgängers and ghosts of happiness past, the neon ghosts of her disenfranchised present transmuted through the multi-coloured lights into a form of private terror. She came to remind herself as well as to forget, she came for the thrill that rides the coat tails of unthreateningly irrational fear.
The crone stood out immediately, an ancient gypsy obvious against the backdrop of happy families and surly young carnies. It was as though she were a mind-writer, projecting into Dot’s mind to make her presence known, as the world seemed to fade around her and she felt drawn to that old woman standing before the “THE VOID.” Its name was written, unassumingly in black pen on white cardboard, above her small ticket booth, and a toothless smile was flashed as Dot paid her four dollars. The old woman laughed, and promised that “THE VOID” – as she said it Dot heard the capitals slamming into her eardrums – that “THE VOID” would both terrify and amaze, that she would leave it irreparably changed.

Dot started to laugh, until the old woman’s voice filled her mind, with a cackling of her own. She glanced down at her ticket, at the words scrawled in that same semi-legible hand: DO NOT FOLD. Dot was momentarily filled with terror – until she reminded herself of the dozens of haunted houses that promised exactly the same.
She stepped into the airless void – never to be seen again.

This story is the introduction to a story that has (hopefully) broken my writer’s block and allowed me to keep writing. More on this tale soon…it is only a fragment, but hopefully can stand alone as well.

Filed under: fiction Tagged: creative writing, fiction, flash fiction, fragment, short story, very short story, writing ]]>