The Girl Who Blocked

The line blinked imposingly.1

I stared at the monitor, my fingers unmoving on the keyboard, my mind aching to write something yet feeling nothing to write about. Nothing at all. The whirring of the black box beneath the screen and desk became alternatively distant and deafening in its volume--urging me to type. Type anything. Get the ideas out, get the feelings out, get it all out like you normally do. My special little purging process.2

Another cough wracked my body, but I muffled it as best I could so as not to wake my mother from her slumber. I had been sick for over two weeks now, and after having suffered a splitting headache only the night before, she was on the prowl--ready to attack at the slightest hint I was getting worse again. It was sweet, I suppose. In some sort of concerned, suffocating parent kind of way. It was for my sake. The last of her children.3

I leaned back in my chair, wrapping the thick pink plaid blanket tighter around my body and resisting the desire to just turn the computer off and drag my feet upstairs to another night of all thoughts, no sleep. It was funny almost, how I could go to bed one night with an idea so clearly and cleverly envisioned in my mind and wake up the next day, wanting so bad to put it to paper or monitor and finding myself unable. Words--while a wonderful, wonderful thing--are often so clumsy, so easily mistaken and so easily tainted.4

The message is often hard to get across.5

I don't write original things so often anymore, but mostly fanfiction, just because there's always one thing you want to change--one thing to make that scene better; to make that character more lifelike; to give the creator one last chance to redeem himself or herself or whatever they may be. It was really more about making it how you wanted. To bend the story to your liking. Some people say that it's not a real story because you take someone else's hard work and just tweak it here and there, but does that make it any less real? Does it make the hours or the days that you spent toiling over what to do next any less there? I wish people understood.6

I sighed and stared at the wood of my desk--cluttered with multiple items that I wasn't sure how what got where. A Sims 2 game box, a notebook, a silver spoon on a napkin, a cup of chocolate frosting, a Superman dry-erase board, and a beer mug that had been filled with Dr. Pepper only hours ago. They hadn't moved and I hadn't moved and the line blinked on and on and on...7

My black and white cat strolled over and rubbed up against the chair, letting out a squeak (the only time he makes a sound normal enough to qualify as that of a male cat is when he's jealous), beckoning me towards the stairs with his wise monkey tail. I lifted him up off the ground, releasing a strained sound while I did so. "You," I said, "Have been eating Avey's food again, haven't you "Muffin"?" no response.8

He curled up under my chin, rubbing his nose against my jawline while I scratched along his back. "What do you think, "Muffin-Man"? To sleep or not to sleep?" Again, he didn't say anything, though his answer was obvious. "But what about tomorrow, Cartman? What if I can't write again? What if I can't think again?" I clawed gently at his neck, watching with the same content detachment I'd been feeling all day while he closed his eyes and purred happily.9

"What if I don't wake up tomorrow, hm? Who's going to finish this then?" All he did was continue rumbling in his broken motorboat kind of purr that we all had grown to love. I sighed again, then shook as I covered another hacking fit with my elbow.10

"Must be nice, being a cat..." I mumbled when it had ended. "No worries about writer's block or artist's block or any kind of block that you can't eat through or sleep on." I let my hands fall to my sides and he leaped off my lap, waddling towards the staircase. Conceding defeat, I picked up my Rio--the only MP3 you could buy for ten dollars in New York City--and followed him.11

"You win, Cartman. Tomorrow then."