The Writer

It’s silent…disturbingly silent. Even if it is 3 in the morning, you’d expect the crickets to be out serenading each other. In the middle of the darkness, a dim blue/off-white glow of a laptop computer monitor flickers. In front of it, the faint silhouette of a man, hands on his head, shaking with disapproval. The keyboard clicks a few times, and words disappear off the screen. The man has been at this since he ate Chinese take-out for dinner, and hasn’t left his chair since answering the door to tip the high school boy who drove him his food.

Writer’s Block? More like Writer’s Great Wall of China, the man thinks to himself. Frustrated, he throws a crumbled fortune cookie at his overflowing trashcan, bouncing out, showing an ironic fortune: Your ideas will inspire others. He looks at his watch—3:18am. With a sigh, the man looks at what he has accomplished thus far; 8 prompts, highlighted in bold, lines of personal notes italicized, and a variety of key points underlined. Unfortunately, none of that translates to the necessary yet elusive essay form that will satisfy the requirement.

Tap, tap, tap, tappity, tappity tap. The cursor dances across the screen, words left in its wake. It halts, seemingly realizing the sloppy trail it has been leaving behind, and quickly retreats to clean up its mess. The man is taking two steps forward, three steps back; this must be the hardest assignment he has had yet. The fact that there is a deadline does nothing but add stress to the entire already dicey situation.

He tries to reread the text that is already jotted down, but prevents himself from deleting it. He quickly hits Ctrl + S, and closes the lid of the laptop, letting the poor thing finally go to sleep. Now that the room returns to being pitch black, the man rolls onto his bed, and lies there thinking, patiently waiting for the darkness to lull him to sleep.

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On a completely unrelated note: cheers to half a century of posts in 2010.