Road Blocks

I’m not sure why writing is coming so hard right now, but it is.  I don’t know if it’s the thought of writing every day for the next year.  I sit down every day and hover the pen over the page, but nothing wants to come out. I don’t know where my story is going.  I don’t know what the characters are doing.  Normally that’s OK.  I don’t need to know where they’re going long-term.  But usually I know how they’re going to travel through the next few pages.  But not lately.  Lately I just sit and stare.

I don’t want to abandon the story.  That’s not it (for once), and it’s not that I don’t want to write.  It’s just become hard. I can’t explain it any more than that.

I’m one of those people who doesn’t really like to edit as a go along.  I just want to get the story out and then rework from there.  But I think it might be time to at least go back and do some constructive read-throughs.

I’ve started developing character relationships that I wasn’t expecting.  I like them, but now that I’m conscious of them, I feel like they’re trying to hard.  I feel like something that was good and natural is now cheesy and not fitting with the tone of the story.

Maybe I’m to the point where I need a general outline.  I never thought that would happen or that I would get to that point. But it think it might be here.  Maybe I just need to write down random thoughts.  Kind of like I am now.

Even as I write this I feel like I’m cheating, like I’m not really writing because I haven’t written anything for the story.  And I’m about halfway through my time.

That’s another thing.  Before, my thirty minutes flew by.  It was the fastest part of my day, even on the days that I struggled with the story.  Now I find myself wanting to reach out and check the timer on a regular basis.

I’ve thought about working on something else, but every time I do that I feel like I accomplish nothing.  Inevitably I never finish whatever short story I try to write while taking a break.  I always come to hate them and find them stupid, so I feel that it’s better to cut my losses than push forward and finish something that is mediocre.  Perhaps that’s just a cop-out.

I suppose I’ve spent enough time lamenting the life of a wannabe writer.  It’s time to actually write something.

View From My Windows

A Short Story Told From My Neighbor’s Perspective

It is around 7:00 am.  She awakes without an alarm as she does every morning.  This shouldn’t come as a surprise.  She is ninety-three years old and has awoken on more mornings than most.  It is snowing again.  This has been a terrible winter, and the new neighbors all but destroyed the safe harbor for the squirrels and chipmunks that frequent her yard.

She gets dressed, puts on her coat, hat and mittens, and calls to her small dog, Maggie.  She looks out the window to see if Maggie II is out yet.  She likes Maggie II well enough, but she’s very loud and excitable.  Very similar to that big white dog that lives behind the new neighbors.  Maggie is not very fond of Maggie II.  She doesn’t understand why she barks so much.

There is no sign of Maggie II.  She begins to gather up the food for the birds and squirrels.  She crumbles the old bread from yesterday, and looks through the waste from yesterday’s meals, fishing out the rind of her orange.  She carefully shuffles out the door and over to the bench by the garage.  She places the bread on the bench and tosses the orange rind behind the garage.  She scoops out birdseed from the bin next to the garage and fills the feeders.  She looks up in the trees, searching for any sign of raccoons.  She just doesn’t understand why the possums and raccoons keep coming around and getting into her attic, even after the new neighbors destroyed all of her bushes that provided them access.

She walks back to the house, peering into the neighbors’ yard.  It’s hard to see what’s going on over there with the tall fence they put up.  There was nothing wrong with the chain link fence.  It allowed them to see each other better, at least once you pressed your face through all of the over growth.

Maggie II came bursting out of the dog door just before she reached the door.  Apparently the neighbors slept in this morning.  Hello, Maggie II, she says.  She used to generously provide Maggie II with dog biscuits.  Tried to put a little meat on  her bones.  The neighbor lady came out one morning and told her she had to stop.  Maggie II needed to lose weight.  She wondered what uneducated vet they were going to.  Definitely not the one she recommended to them when they first moved in.

She shuffled back inside, and into the kitchen.  She looked out the window and saw the woman out there with her camera again.  What could she possibly be taking pictures of?  She thought again how weird that was.  Although, the woman is weird – always changing jobs, always running – weird.

She wondered if they would bother to shovel the snow off the sidewalk this time around.  She watched them finally clear off the ice yesterday, but apparently they did it only because they were expecting company.  Some people arrived in an SUV around 7:00 and hadn’t left by the time she went to bed.  It also appeared as if they were trying to “save” the parking spot in front of their house so the strange man who always parks in front of their house couldn’t park there.  She wondered about the state trooper that used to stop by their house.  They said they were friends with him, but she hadn’t seen any trooper cars in quite some time.

She walked to her living room, called to the dog, and settled down on the couch.  She turned on the tv and adjusted her position so that she had a better view of the front walk.  Once she was comfortable, she was ready for another day of watching the neighborhood.  Little did she know how very much she had in common with Maggie II.