PROMPT: Write a story in which an author is trying to run from writer’s block, which is an actual object that’s chasing them.

The problem started in the shower.

For Kara, the shower was where she thought all her Great Thoughts. This was where all her story ideas arose and took form; where all her well-loved and richly diverse characters were birthed; where all her amazing fictional conversations found life, both those that made it to the page and those that never quite saw the light of day within the confines of her agent’s office. This was where she’d conceived of the time-traveling mad scientist/detective who solved cold cases without significantly altering the established timeline and which had won her a Hugo, and also the space opera based on King Lear, which had not. The shower — with its expensive, custom-made Italian tile, its clouds of therapeutically-scented steam, its rainfall showerhead, and its cucumber melon body wash — was her haven of inspiration.

Until this morning.

As she stood beneath the warm spray, her mind struggled to clear itself of the fog of sleep. She hadn’t slept well, only drifting into a deep slumber a mere two hours before her alarm blared, and it had been all she could do to force herself out of bed. She’d awoken several times throughout the night with the unshakable feeling that someone or something was in the room with her. The room itself seemed darker and colder than usual, the air heavier. But the light of the bedside lamp had shown the room empty and her fears ungrounded. After the third time, she’d left the lamp on.

Groggy and feeling slightly hungover, although she’d only had a single glass of wine with dinner, she tilted her head back and closed her eyes, offering up a beseeching prayer to Calliope, with a post script plea to her eight sisters, just to cover her bases. Kara hummed as the water gently tickled her scalp, wetting her hair and cascading down over her shoulders. In this relaxed state, she pointedly thought of her laptop, focusing on the stalled scene left open on the screen the night before.

In actuality, the problem hadn’t really started in the shower, but in the office, her private workspace, with its large windows and spectacular view of the garden. The previous day had been a hellish one of pacing and talking to herself, of writing awkward bits and then deletingdeletingdeleting. But no matter how determinedly she stared at the screen, no matter how many times her fingers hovered over the keyboard in anticipation, waiting for the electromagnetic impulses that would tell them which keys to strike, she only added 257 words to her word count in 16 hours.

She’d written herself into a corner.

It wasn’t an unfamiliar corner. She’d visited it on many occasions when writing Damien’s Blade, the sophomore installment of her time-traveling mad scientist/detective series, so much so that she’d laughably imagined herself adding a sectional and a plasma TV to the corner, with a Keurig on the end table for those extended stays. And always, always, the answer to finding her way out of that corner lay in sliding aside that plastic curtain with the charming swimming goldfish and stepping into the tub.

Until today, that is.

Because nothing was happening. Massive amounts of nothing. No flashes of inspiration. No ah-ha moments. Nothing but a big black void of emptiness. She flippantly thought it a pity she didn’t meditate because, given the volume of nothing in her brain, she had to be enviably close to Enlightenment.

Frustrated, Kara grabbed the shampoo and began to lather her hair. Her heroine, Maisy, had killed her wicked uncle, the Prince Regent, fourteen pages ago and she’d subsequently fought her way out of the castle stronghold and fled the kingdom, chased by his loyal legions. He had spies everywhere. No place was safe for her.

And it was here that Kara realized she had no way to save the savior of the kingdom. Maisy had no armies to command, no friends to rally, not even a servant to assist her. She was isolated, a fugitive, a wanted murderer. How in the world was Kara supposed to redeem her heroine without a major rewrite? 

At 11:30 last night, her agent had reassured her between gaping yawns that it was just writer’s block, that she wasn’t a failure, and that she should take a few days and do something fun, get some rest. Her college fiction writing professor had always told the class that there was no such thing as writer’s block, that it was just her mind not wanting to focus. His advice had been to just write something, anything.

But Kara wasn’t the type to have more than one project going at the same time and was unable to just write for the sake of writing. She was a very linear person and preferred to write from “Once upon a time” to “The End” without any detours or roadblocks.

Or writer’s blocks.

Think, Kara.

As she lathered, she tried to picture Maisy, on horseback, wounded and exhausted, riding through the dense, unwelcoming forest surrounding the kingdom, without food or sources of comfort. How would she find help?

Fairies?

No. Kara had already used them in a glorious dream sequence earlier in the book.

The nomads?

Nope. They’d volunteered the information necessary to challenge the Prince Regent, at great personal risk, but they were free-spirited and defenseless. They’d be hard-pressed to protect her when loyalists bent on revenge hunted her down.

The forest animals?

No. No. No. For God’s sake, Maisy wasn’t Snow White!

With a sigh, Kara bent to turn off the taps, and it was at that precise moment that she noticed how much darker the bathroom seemed. Normally, the pair of twin designer bulbs over the vanity cast more than enough light for her to shower, yet now she could barely see the knob as she turned off the water. This wasn’t the kind of dark that meant one of the bulbs had burnt out. She knew that dark, had experienced it last week when she’d changed one of the bulbs. This … this was different.

She tried to swallow the lump in her throat and thought back to the night before, to the presence that she’d felt in her oppressively dark bedroom. She could feel it again, here, now, as she shivered, hunched and vulnerable. Unsure if it was the chill air or fear that raised the goosebumps on her bare arms, she tilted her head ever so slightly and glanced toward the curtain. Light spilled faintly over the top of the rod, like the corona of the sun in full eclipse, but she could see no light through the curtain, as if something, something large and solid, was blocking it.

Her imagination had no problem painting a rather vivid scenario of herself as Janet Leigh, with Anthony Perkins waiting for her, just on the other side of the curtain. “Of course not. I’m not trying to write that story.” But the darkness was too big to be a person, and it had no distinctive shape. It just was.

“This is ridiculous,” she thought to herself. “I’m a grown woman with an MFA and my own fan fiction category on AO3, dammit. I am NOT afraid of the dark!” She straightened, then squared her shoulders, grabbed the curtain by the goldfish, and ripped it aside.

All Kara could hear was the drip of the faucet as she surveyed the now brilliantly lit bathroom. Nothing moving, nothing out of place, nothing blocking the light. She pulled the curtain closed again. The artificial light from the light bar over the sink cast its familiar glow through the shower curtain just as it did every morning.

Confused, Kara slid the curtain open again, less violently this time, and stepped out. She wrapped her towel around her body, then reached for the doorknob. She hadn’t heard the door open or close while she’d been under the spray, but then she hadn’t really been paying attention, either, too lost in her own thoughts of avenging heroines and their residency issues. She yanked the door open and stuck her head out, scanning her bedroom for any anomalies or intruders.

Nothing.

Telling herself that the stress of writer’s block was playing havoc with her sensibilities, Kara dressed hurriedly, pinning her damp hair into a pile on top her head and lacing her cross-trainers. Walking into the kitchen, she hit the button on the coffee maker and glanced out the kitchen window. Early summer meant the birds had been awake and chirping since well before dawn, and she pushed up the sash and inhaled. Honeysuckle from the neighbor’s fencerow drifted on the breeze, and the birdsong was joined by the humming of bees in the azaleas just beneath the window. The sun was up, the sky was bright blue, and the weather app on her phone promised no rain for at least two more days.

Despite the gorgeous day, Kara’s mood remained somber. Like Eeyore with his personal raincloud, she couldn’t shake the gloom that hovered over her. She poured herself a cup of coffee, then leaned her hip against the counter. A hummingbird flitted at the feeder, but instead of being charmed, she remained preoccupied by that illusive perception of darkness and her failure at writing. What had come over her? Right now, she couldn’t even conjure up a mental image of Maisy, nor could she envision the words she’d already committed to the page, let alone those she hadn’t. It was like her imagination had completely shut down and had taken her rational mind with it. 

Reluctantly, Kara acknowledged that she wasn’t going to accomplish anything just standing around, so she topped off her mug, then nodded to herself and started for her office with purpose, intent on conquering her conquering heroine.

She stopped short just outside the door, like she’d walked into a wall.

Hot coffee spilled on her shoes, but she ignored it as waves of aversion and discontent assaulted her, causing her to stagger. She could see the white screen of her laptop, glowing like a beacon in stark contrast to the rich wood of the desk and the deep green of the wall behind it. It both beckoned and repelled her. She struggled, trying to push her way through, but she made no progress. The more she pressed forward, the darker her vision grew, until fear overwhelmed her and she fled back to the kitchen. She dropped into a chair, her heart racing and her lungs gasping for air as if she’d just run a marathon for which she’d been spectacularly unprepared.

What was happening to her?

Lying. She was lying to herself. Her agent lied to her. She wasn’t any good. She was a failure. Everything she wrote was garbage. Why on earth did she ever believe that anyone would read the trash she wrote? She could practically hear the critics now, tearing apart her writing, her style, her word choice, even the cover illustration. Why did he ever leave her job at Weisenbaum & Tubbman? She’d had a promising career as a legal assistant. The hours sucked, but the pay hadn’t been bad, and Harold’s misogynistic jokes were cringeworthy, but not a deal-breaker.  This writing stuff was just a pipe dream and now, NOW she was going to fail in front of everyone.

She could feel the fear, the doubt, the frustration of not having the words she needed surging, filling her. Glancing down, she saw the black rising, slowly climbing up her legs and pressing down on her shoulders from behind, folding her in on herself. It was a real, visceral thing, and she shuddered as the cloying, clawing inkiness wrapped itself around her, blocking out the sunshine and the birdsong and all the joy of the new day. She was drowning in self-loathing and the knowledge that she’d disappointed so many. Expectations had been high, her own especially, and now the truth — that she was a disappointment to all — was revealed in all its glory. The blackness was like an otherworldly octopus, enveloping her, breathing with her, its tentacles binding her to the chair and squeezing what little imagination and skill and innate talent she still possessed from her mind.

From her soul.

Her soul.

Kara’s eyes snapped open.

Her soul.

Maisy’s soul.

Maisy’s soul was pure, her love of her kingdom and its people was pure. Maisy’s mentor had told her that before he died back in chapter five. He’d given her the torq for protection. Told her she’d always have sanctuary within his walls.

She knew how to save her heroine.

The shroud of darkness was wrenched from her shoulders and the bands squeezing her chest released their grip, allowing her to draw a deep, cleansing breath. With renewed determination, Kara stood on shaky legs and poured herself a fresh cup of coffee. The self-condemnation died. The dread of entering the office fell away and was replaced with a desire to move and a new energy to get busy. Her fingers itched with the urgency to capture her ideas before they evaporated. As she hit the doorway, she thought she heard a wail of desperation and defeat, and thought she saw the kitchen darken ominously behind her.

But turning, she realized it was just a cloud passing over the sun. The cry was just a bird in the trees outside, and that odd wisp of black smoke dissipating in the sea of dust particles lit by the sunbeam cutting a swath across the floor was just … well, whatever it was, it was gone.

With a smile, Kara sat down at her desk and began to write.

November 22, 2019

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