Somedays this happens in NaNoWriMo. That's all I'm going to say.
"It was a dark and stormy night, and the trees were almost bent double from the force of the wind. Streets had been closed off, and the city found itself plunged into almost total darkness."
Carrie stared at the typewriter page in front of her. Seriously, here she was trying to get something out on to paper that would be worthy of publication and she had to start with "It was a dark and stormy night"?
No one would buy that. She knew she certainly wouldn't.
The paper pulled out of the roller with a satisfying whirring sound, and the crumpled paper made a solid thunk as it hit the side of the waste paper basket. Carrie grabbed another piece of paper, and set it into the roller, slamming the carriage return roughly in her rush to get back to the page.
The blank page stared at her, mockingly. It taunted her, it's pristine whiteness the growing accusation that she couldn't pull this off even if she wanted to.
"No one will buy your work. You'll get kicked out of your apartment, you will starve on the street."
Carrie hated the voice in her head. The voice was unfailingly negative, and it really seemed to have it out for her. Why it stuck around if it hated her so much was one of the on going mysteries in her life.
OK. Focus.
Carrie tried to think of something that might inspire her. Maybe something she'd seen or heard today at school...
"She is not," he said, his cerulean eyes sparkling as he laughed a hearty laugh.
Sara leaned forward until her face was almost touching his. "She is too! He was buying her affection for favours. She is a prostitute!"
Another piece of paper met its maker in a loud and violent fashion.
Cerulean? Seriously? Who in their right mind describes any guy as having cerulean eyes?
Carrie reloaded the typewriter for the umpteenth time tonight. If this kept up, there was a very real chance that she was going to start having trouble with the rent.
Maybe she needed a distraction. Yeah, that's it. Didn't everyone say that if you couldn't think of something to go do something else, and the inspiration would strike as you were trying to ignore what you were originally trying to do?
And there was that station running the Star Trek Enterprise marathon this afternoon...
After several hours, a bag of potato chips, and half a litre of Coke, Carrie was back at the typewriter. She felt as she always did after watching this particular piece of the Star Trek universe: utterly uninspired.
Carrie stared at the paper. The paper stared back.
The room was filled with the sound of the clock ticking, and the water in the sink slowly dripping out of the tap.
This wasn't working so well. Carrie reached over and hit the shift lock. It settled down into place with a nice solid thunk. Another finger reached over slowly, hitting the T. Carrie pointed out a pinkie finger towards the h, and hit it solidly as well. An e followed shortly afterwards.
Carrie looked at the The as if she were daring it to stop being on the page.
The The didn't move. It sat there, hunkered into its corner of the page as if the mere existance of Carrie's eyes were holding it in place.
Carrie and the The didn't move for quite some time.
Finally, another finger reached out. C appeared. Then an a. There was a long pause. Another t showed up on the page.
The cat
Carrie blinked. OK, there's a cat. What's the cat doing.
The cat sat
Really? It sat? OK, at least it was something, and it wasn't completely awful. Maybe the cat would go on to do something really interesting. Cats could do interesting things. There were tons of stories out there about cats fighting ogres, and rescuing villages and sutff. Maybe htis owuld be one of those cats.
The cat sat in the hat.
Carrie sat with her forehead against the table, feeling the cool wooden surface for a while, trying not to look at the page with its really sad sentence.
She supposed that it could be an interesting hat. But she really really doubted it.
Another piece of paper hit the floor.
Carrie gave up and went to bed.
The next morning dawned bright and cheerful. At leas the bird outside the window was cheerful. Carrie wasn't. She seriously considered pulling the blankets over her head and going back to sleep. The bird was pretty loud though. And persistent.
With a sigh, Carrie pulled herself out of bed.
She very seriously went through her morning routine. She had a shower, got dressed, brushed her hair, and headed downstairs. Her newspaper was sitting in the foyer, where it usually did. She picked it up, waved to the doorman, and walked up the stairs, slowly. She walked back into her apartment and headed into the kitchen, dropping the paper on the table so she could make herself some coffee and food.
With the percolator bubbling away, and bread in the toaster, Carrie sat down and unfolded the paper. She very carefully opened it up, and began to read it, section by section, in meticulous detail. She only paused long enough to grab her breakfast, and spent a lot of time trying to decipher the meaning of the football statistics in the sports section. This was no mean feat as she had never paid any attention to football in her life.
Finally, with the newspaper read, the coffee drunk, breakfast eaten, dishes washed, counters scrubbed, floor swept, and windows washed, Carrie returned to writing.
She decided to forgo the typewriter today, as that obviously hadn't worked yesterday. She found a notebook in a drawer, and a ballpoint pen that wasn't red or green or purple, and she returned to her desk. She opened the notebook to its first carefully lined page, took the cap of the pen, and shifted herself in her seat several times.
She was too far from the desk. Carrie rolled the chair forward.
That made her too far from the desk. She rolled it back again.
The tip of the pen met the paper, and she willed her hand to do something. Anything.
Any time now.
This was going to happen.
Right.
About.
Now.
There was a brilliant sunset in the west today, and Greg stopped to admire it. It wasn't often that he thought about things like sunsets, but today seemed as good a day as any to start.
Oh hey, Carrie thought. This is actually happening.
It had been a good day for Greg. The girl he adored had agreed to marry him. The flowers seemed brighter because of it, and the sun shone a deeper shade of red as it moved towards the horizon. What an awesome day.
OK, so it would need some editting. That was fine. As long as the words got out, editting could be done later. By someone else even. Just keep going, she thought. Don't stop writing.
The phone rang.
Carrie sat at her desk, staring at the offending telephone. How dare it ring now? Didn't it know that she had a deadline? She glared at it, hoping it would take the hint and shut up. It rang louder, daring her to do something about it. After the seventh ring she sighed, and got up to answer the phone.
It was her mother. Carrie sat down, defeated. Her mother was a great talked. She could talk for hours about virutally nothing. She could even do it, Carrie swore, without breathing.
Carrie was subjected to a detailed ananlysis of her father's stomach, her brother's marital troubles, the dog's bad leg, and the cat's horrific litter habits. Once her mother was done with the details of the immediate family, she dove into the vast arrya of aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbours, and shop keepers in the area. All told, the call had taken two and a half hours out of Carrie's schedule, and, while she was now up to date on the status of the green grocer's bunions, she had absolutely no idea where Greg and his erstwhile fiancee were heading in her story.
She had finally peeled her ear off the receiver after making her excuses to her mother. She went back to her desk, and adjusted the chair several more times until she found a comfortable spot. She traced circles around Greg's name, drew doodles in the margins, and even flipped to a new page for good measure.
Nothing.
The minutes ticked by.
Her pen touched the paper again, right next to Greg's awesome day. She had a feeling more was out there, she just had to remember where she had been going before being so rudely distracted.
He headed out into the city, big plans for the day chasing through his head. First, he would meet with Eloise. And then, they would
There was a knock at the door.
Carrie was not expecting anyone, and the sound scared her right out of her chair. Who the heck was coming by this early in the morning?
She checked the clock. It was 2:15.
Most of the day wasted, and for what?
She dragged herself to the door, and peeked out the security window.
It was her mother. Her mother was holding a bottle of wine, and something that suspiciously looked like a bag of groceries. Apparently her mother had just invited herself over for dinner. Again.
Carrie leaned against the door, feeling suddenly very weak.
Maybe she just wasn't destined to write today.
Oh well.
There was always tomorrow.
The next morning Carrie woke up, slightly hung over. She went through her morning routine, fetched the newspaper, and sat down with a cup of strong coffee to try and sustain her through the trials of today.
Very carefully and purposefully, she opened the paper to the classifieds.
She circled several job openings that looked like they would help her pay the rent. It looked like this might be the only way that she could.
And hey, she could always write on the side. Maybe she could eventually get that novel out and not starve.
She hoped.
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