A Writer's Struggle

1947 Continental
photo by olivander.

Let’s assume now, for a moment, that I will be able to focus my energies enough this evening to sit down and write. I have blocked off the evening, eaten dinner, avoided any stimulants of alcohol or medication so as to clear my head. The laptop now sits upon my desk, rather than on the Ouija board on the ottoman by the leather chair. This is serious.

[5 minutes later] Presently, I am cooking a butternut squash, on the recommendation from John Felling. The shepherd’s pie was not filling enough. After I eat that, and brew my tea, and tidy the apartment for it is simply an external reflection of my state of mind, I will begin to write in Stuttersville. Don’t be intimidated that Edgar is approaching the house of his uncle, and that you do not yet know how to handle the potential secrets to be uncovered there. It will all flow naturally once you fill Edgar’s shoes and begin to roam the house. You’ve seen it now, that Germanic village house atop the hill, circled by pines. Not a mansion by any means, but the home of a wealthy bachelor, with a sense of taste, not lavishness.

What time of year is it in Stuttersville, right now? Are there gardens out back, or the skeletal trees and trimmed back flowerbeds, the covered rosebushes. Yes, it must be fall. Pre-halloween? Oh shit, I don’t know.

[15 minutes later] I still believe that writing may be possible this evening, especially if I toss aside any pretensions of publishing it some day. This way I lessen the pressure of getting it right. Don’t forget that Stuttersville is intended to be a sandbox, a place in which I can retreat, and think and feel and narrate anything, even my own trouble as the writer trying to wrench it free from obstacles. Ready…set…go!

He spent nearly a decade chasing down the facts of his uncle’s death. What became of the doctor that had signed his death certificate? Why had the authorities shot down family requests for an autopsy?
For more years than family historians could trace, there had been deep rifts within the family. Not as simple as a sudden branching out of the family over the disagreement of two brothers. It seemed to be a genetic flaw that cast the members of this family against itself for generations. It thrived on conflict. Each member contained within themselves a voilent urge to scratch out the eyes of their brother. Others grew inseparable, every secret shared, lives entwined, homes no more than blocks apart, or children living with their parents well into their forties.
[10 minutes later] Okay writer, you’re struggling…the light is starting to fade….run ahead to catch up with it!

With the increasing years of decrepitude, one boy rose up out of the poverty in which his family had fated him. His boyish exuberance had caught the attention of labor owners, of warehouse stockmen, of dockworker supervisors. He didn’t have any brains, they knew, but he would give 100% of himself to slave away at a task, and all he looked for in return was a little beer money.

[10 minutes later] Crap, it’s all falling apart now. You see it, don’t you? The narrator has grown sleepy and his rationality has taken to drink. A glass of port sits beside me, a treat for having sat at my desk in the den throughout the evening, in the similitude of writing, even if the words were wasted on the wrong story.