New Life To Old Thoughts

There comes a time in the life of every writer when he/she sits down at their laptop ready to work, and finds, to their dismay, that their minds are as blank as the page in front of them.

To date, it has not been scientifically proven whether not this affliction is contagious, and reports concerning its possible fatal consequences have not as yet been confirmed.

That said, it is one mangy pest of a nuisance when it hits; and the handful of survivors out there can attest to how doubly hard it is to get rid of. A few cures to it have been found by veteran writers; divine inspiration being one of them, but for some reason, that doesn’t seem to be as common as it once was in the Renaissance era.

Simple inspiration, on the other hand, is a little more common, yet, alas, not common enough in day to day life to send this miserable affliction the same merry way as smallpox. (It was merry for us, at least). Examples of such inspiration would be a movie, a book, a conversation, or a grain of thought that can take root and blossom into something as far away from a blank page as… well, a piece of writing.

On Phone Calls and Writing Bursts

Ever wanted to know how to become famous among your extended family? How to rise through the ranks of gossip topics that your aunts tear to bits at every family gathering?

Well, hunt no more, weary seeker. Through toil and torture I have searched and yearned (no, not really), but at long last, I have found a sure fire, two step method with guaranteed results.

It’s simple.

a)      Get an injury. Doesn’t have to be major, should just be large enough to constantly remind people of its existence and be a nuisance enough to make you complain about it once in a while just for kicks.

b)      Let your mother find out.

I had my incredible acrobatic feat at midnight Saturday in the Big City; and it was a full twenty four hours before I got home. I hadn’t told mum about my little predicament, obviously; but there’s no way to hide a drooping, swollen lip when it’s quite literally on your face.

It was kind of like Andrew Garfield turning around and showing Aunt May his face after his first night out in a proper Spidey costume, which, quite by chance, involved a close and extremely personal introduction with the front and side of a moving bus. I know, my cut was barely a fraction of what he had on his face, but the respective expressions involved in that exchange were pretty much the same: my mother was like “Oh God, what happened to you, how could this….” etc., and I was all, “It’s nothing, Mum, please, please go back to sleep…”

Of Flash Cards And Talking Dummies

Remember when I said I was having a lousy stretch of luck these days? Well, it hadn’t even begun yet. You know how they say that magicians save their best for last; well, call Fate a performer, because on Saturday night, Fate did exactly that, just for ’lil old me.

It was close to 1am, and I was in the kitchen, just heading off to sleep after a glass of water. I registered stepping  into a puddle, and that’s when my mind hit the Fast-forward button. The next thing I knew, I was on the ground, and my chin was throbbing like a Harley-Davidson, if that makes any sense.

I was back in that calm, contemplatory state of higher being for a few seconds. I lay there on the ground, all serene and placid, and prodded inside my mouth with my tongue. When comprehension took me, (a few good minutes later) it was that I was feeling a gaping hole where there should not have been any hole.

My first thought, I swear to you: “Oh, there’s a hole in my mouth. Good thing I already had that glass of water,”

Then, my mind got slightly clearer, and my next thought made slightly more sense: “Why is there a hole in my mouth?”

I had fallen face first onto cold, hard tiles. My feet had literally flown backwards behind me, and I guess I would have made a perfect entry to America’s Funniest Home Videos, awesome falls category. Now I know what those poor souls felt like.

Here, There, Somewhere

All in all, I have to admit that this has been a really, really bad period for me. Not just inspiration-wise, luck-wise, or internet-wise, but also pretty much everything-else-wise, too.

I have been having really, really slow going getting inspired these days. This blog was supposed to help inspire me to start writing again, and so it has. But blog writing is very different from novel writing, as all writers would probably agree. It takes very, very little to put someone off novel writing when they are in a slump and trying to make their way to fit word to paper (or screen, as the case may be).

With me, the lack of internet, which usually in no way has any direct correlation with novel writing (no, wait, the relationship is inverse; the more internet I have, the less time I have to write) aaaaand I lost track of where I was. Where was I?

Ah, yes. The internet, which usually makes me write less, is now gone, and for that reason, I am in no mood at all to write. Makes sense? Not at all, and yet here I am, determinedly sticking to this excuse like a guy standing smugly on ice that is both visibly and audibly cracking ominously all around him.

Fate Makes A Lousy Sparring Partner

The tenth of April came and went, but our phone lines are still dead.

It isn’t just us; all our neighbors and pretty much everyone up and down the road we live on do not have their telephones yet. But the most annoying part is that none of them seem to find it annoying. Why not? Mobile phones.

Oh, sure.

But I, on the other hand, have been going for three weeks straight without Wi-Fi, and it has been clawing at me. Especially more so, since I began the Mathew persona. It’s like fate is having a good old chuckle at my expense.

I can see it now: this scene is playing out in my head where Fate is sitting at a bar with his buddies Death and Taxes, and they’re having this hearty old laugh while Fate goes:

“… and then he thinks since he has internet, he can keep it up for as long as he wants,”

“HAW HAW HAW!”

“And, and…. It’s been THREE WHOLE WEEKS!”

Death raises his glass, “To Fate!”

“Hear, hear!” Taxes calls

Loud guffaws resume.

End scene.

A Keytastrophe Like No Other

                It has happened again. It wasn’t by choice, it never is. But somehow, someway, I always end up finding myself in deep trouble that seems to have no end.

My fingers keep missing the mark. I try, but I keep failing. This is torment of the most awful sort. What sort of writer cannot write? And yet there I was, a self-proclaimed writer, who, you guessed it, could not write.

There’s more to this story. I was with drunken fingers on a dancing keyboard with roughly 4000 words to write and only a few hours to do it in. Normally, that amount of words in that amount of time would be a breeze; but now, it was a hurricane, and I don’t mean that in a good way.

How did I get there? And why were the words “Help me!” repeating in my mind?

It all started when a friend asked me to help him out.

Of Broomsticks And Inspiration

As you know, these days have found me with a lot less internet time than I would have hoped for. To call this hindrance really annoying would be like calling a bullet to the heart simply an inconvenience.

Hey, not all of us are Arnold Schwarzenegger.

In any case, the opportunist that I am, you would expect me to use this occasion to begin writing again. Lazy or not, the pure boredom would probably get me to back to my stories like nothing else ever could.

Probably might have worked, really. Except for one simple thing. Or, well, to be more accurate, a lack of it.

Electricity.

The power cuts took care of whatever hope I had. From eight am to six pm, workers would be busy down the road meddling with all those cables, shifting them from old post to new. Obviously, it would seem that they were averse to electrocution, but still, you’d think that their payment covers… Never mind.

Bottom line, no electricity during the day. My laptop battery doesn’t last half a minute if it gets unplugged from the main while the lap is still on.

Ergo, not only did I no longer have access to the wonderful World Wide Web, as of now I also did not have access to my Dear Delightful Dell during daylight hours. And by the time night finally rolled around, I was in no mood to start writing. All I have the energy to do is plop on my headphones and play a movie.

Did I just hear you say, “Excuses, excuses,”? Well, excuuuuuse me.

How Dehydration Spawns Tantrums

Ah, April.

The first thing that pops into your mind when you think of April:  Poissen d'Avril, in other words, April Fool’s Day. That one passed right by me this year; I had more pressing problems at hand.

Someone up in the government had decided that the road that led to our home was far too narrow, and since it was a borderline main road of sorts, it needed some widening.

Good news, definitely. Transform a single lane into a double lane, and I’d personally find the chances of a head on collision reduced by probably fifty percent when I get behind the wheel. (I’m not a math guy, that’s a rough, uncalculated estimate).

In any case, I should have been overjoyed.

I was, of course. Until I came home and tried turning the laptop on. That was when I realized there was no electricity. And of course, my laptop’s battery was pretty much expired; all it could afford to give me was thirty seconds if the power cut out while I was using it. Just enough time to hit hibernate and start thinking (yet again) about saving up for a new battery.

Why no electricity? Simple. They were widening the road, and all the streetlights and light posts needed to be shifted to make room for the asphalt. Alrighty then, no electricity during the day, and since we were promised lights once it began to get dark, I didn’t mind it that much. One day without my laptop, maybe I could finally get a bit of reading done after a long while.

Then, I was washing up after lunch when the water started to slow to a trickle before stopping completely. Believe it or not, some bozo had broken the water mains leading to our section of road. Now, we and our neighbors had no electricity, nor water.

Still not that bad. Livable, surely.

Then the final blow fell. As I passed her on the way down to my room, Mum commented that the phone lines were down, too. I said, “Bummer,” and continued on. No phone lines, not the worst that could happen. We had mobile phones, after all.