Writer's Block

Today's place of insiration

 I’ve been working on two novels for three years now. One is Young Adult. The other is Women’s Fiction. Every day I sit in my living room for four hours and pound away on the keys, amid fielding phone calls and questions, the hourly beep of the washing machine, unsolicited texts, the Seventh Day Adventists doing the Lord's work at my doorstep, and my own devilish procrastination. Maybe a snack will help, or a ten-minute break, or starting completely over, or pushing headlong on through type-o’s and all. Nothing really has.

            Behind me I feel the pressure of those who desire - either out of loyalty to a local or hopefully because I actually have talent– another book like my first one. I so want to give that to them. I can see the bold features of my characters and smell the cool earth beneath their feet. I can hear the robins in the background and see the house that they live in. I am given the rare gift of being able to sort through their problems like some ethereal psychotherapist who wants to be their friend. But, what I have to possess in order to make my readers relate to my characters as deeply as they, themselves, relate to their own friends (or if I'm truly lucky, make them hate them as much as they hate their worst nemesis) is inspiration.

            That, in my wonderfully warm living room is what I am lacking. I’ve seen that couch so often that it has lost all beauty to me. I know the people who sit on it, and am too accustomed to the stains in the floor. Inspiration for me comes from changing scenery, something so new that it may be a path trodden heavily by another, but it holds a mystery for me.

            So, I have wandered away, outside my living room, onto roads I have driven and paths I have walked before. They might be slightly familiar, but alone I see them with a different eye.
There are ducks in the pond below me. I have seen that pond before, but I've never stopped long enough to see that there are so many cattails. They alone bring me bring me back to my youth. They remind me of days at the Rock Crusher where the local neighborhood children and I would have cattail wars, and spend countless hours making forts amongst the boulders that we might never return to.

            There is a mysterious house down there too, set against the backdrop of the most amazing forest. It is only minutes from my own backyard, and has probably been here for well over a half a century, but it is new to me. I can see the kitchen, where once there might have been bacon cooked so early in the morning, and up the road there is an old gunshot riddled “School Bus Stop Ahead” sign. Were there children who ran to it at one time? Did they carry lunch pails, or dine on school lunch? Were there school breakfasts offered during that area, or were the kids expected to be well nourished at home prior to racing each other to the stop?

            And where are they now? Did a mother, in a dress or in cool lots, tend to that garden as the earth was just awakening in the spring? Do the worms still wriggle in the earth waiting for the first plantings of potatoes and lettuce only to wonder where all the commotion has gone? Was their a father who lit fires in that crumbling fireplace at night?  Was the atmosphere tense, cold or warm and full of laughter?

            There is mystery in the house. Probably not for the people who lived there, but now, standing alone and in danger of dilapidation, there is for me. I have always wanted to get lost in story, in mystery, and adventure. With every day outside as a child, feeling the cool spring air on my skin, or wiping the sweat from my heated brow only to find a outdoor faucet on a neighbors house to drink from, I found both adventure and inspiration. What I see today is that to find adventure, you must first be adventurous.

            Every day I will try and find inspiration, and maybe someday it will lead me to you; the ghost who waits for an ear who will listen; the character whose story needs told.