Pain & Hardship

Pain and Hardship


He was terribly, terribly tired. He had been sitting at the keyboard for twenty minutes now and found himself unable to write anything. So many words inside him, thousands upon thousands. English was the biggest damn language in the world and yet he could not find the force of will to draw upon them.
He paced the room again and then went to the kitchen. He opened another beer, his fourth, and went back to the keyboard. This time he sat at it forcefully, pouncing into the chair, not simply slothing into it like a loose skin. He drank deeply from the beer and started to write. Always it was like this, finding the opening few words that worked, something that bred a life of its own, something that needed him only as a facilitator and not as a creator. He could feel himself cracking under the desperation as he began story after story.

“The young man lived a life of luxury, but one where he felt as though he were but a witness to life’s pleasures.”

Too cornball, too Baudelaire. He needed something that would bite him as soon as the words came.

“Living a life of pure unadulterated sin. That was what was called for. He ate deeply from the flesh of the woman, felt the energy he had just experienced flow through him like warm water.”

Stay away from genre! Keep that tendency to move to the bizarre locked up. Keep that crap away just for a few moments. Just long enough to get it going, that was all he needed.

“Give it up! There is nothing more you can do to resolve your situation.”
“On the contrary, it is only now, when it seems at its bleakest, that I can see my true possibilities. Laid out before me. A map of life.”
“A strange decision to make. This is not the time to be wasting your breath on possibilities, only assurances…”

He stood up in disgust.
It was this that kept him from writing as much as he wanted. He felt as though the world was falling away from him. As though time was slipping by, there was so much inside of him, so many stories that he knew in his head, but could not get them onto the page. The huge whiteness was like a desert for him. Something for him to colonise, or else he felt as though it were all for nothing.
Perhaps it was the music? All night he had played the same stuff, maybe a change would help him, inspire him. He got up to change the radio station, and to get himself a beer at the same time. His fifth. He found a station that seemed to be suitable and sat back down. It was simply a matter of getting it started and then the rest would write itself. He thought back to ‘The Leaking tap of destiny,” his first publication, and his biggest success. It just seemed to be inside him. He remembered the night when it first came to him and how he had sat up until the dawn started to creep through the shutters, writing everything he could. He had felt as though if he were to sleep, it would be gone. But this was not the case. In six short weeks he had written his first novel, and he had never felt this feeling since. Perhaps that was the one story that he had to tell. Perhaps everything else was merely unfinished ideas.
What if he was being too complicated? How about if he kept it simple, went back to his roots, keeping it as brief and short as possible. Imagine he had a limit, something to keep within the confines of.

“He got off the ship. The air was charged and he felt that excitement. Arriving somewhere new, as though it was the first time he had done so. It always felt like this.”

Why was it he always felt like some poor Hemingway impressionist when he wrote like that? He had so little time in which to write, he always felt like he had to do as much as possible. Anything less was simply failure. There was heavy traffic outside, which fell into a low soft rumble. The monotonous drone of it all was starting to get to him. Normally he was impervious to it and would feel as though it were a metronome or a heartbeat. But now it was as though the timbre of the tone had gone off kilter with him. As though it were at just the right pitch to interfere with his brain, like an alarm clock.
It was also hot, and he was starting to sweat out the beers. His shirt stuck to his back and he peeled it loose now, waiting until the skin cooled a little before he let it back. The heat and the traffic. And the flies. Every now and then a fat one would work its way into the room and would fly about in front of him. It distracted him beyond belief. He waved a hand lazily at the fly, but it was a strong one, the sort that is not bothered by a mere gesture, this would need more movement. The idea of it all made him feel weary. He fell back in his chair, resigned to his fate. Sat with his beer and his sweat and the traffic and the fly and no stories to tell.