A Cure for Writer's Block

Here is the text of a short story that I just submitted to a contest.  Hope you like it!  :o)

 

 

After twenty years as a writer, I’ve learned that inspiration can come at anytime and from anywhere.  And I do mean anywhere…

It was just after lunchtime when I pulled into the driveway at the lake house.  My stomach growled unhappily as a reminder.  The drive from Phoenix had only taken a little over an hour, but after a three-and-a-half hour flight from Tampa, it had been almost torturous.  I’ve never really enjoyed travel, though it’s a necessary part of my job. 

I turned off the ignition but couldn’t bring myself to open the door and get out.  This had all been my agent’s idea, and I really wasn’t thrilled about being stiff-armed into a time of rest and relaxation.  Something had been lacking in my writing lately, but I couldn’t see how spending a month at this lake house was going to solve my problems.

I looked around.  The landscaping on either side of the drive screamed Southwestern motif, with rocks and cactus scattered everywhere.  Not exactly inviting to a man used to sand and palm trees.  With a sigh I opened the door and made a mental note not to let my agent choose my next vacation spot.

As I approached the house, I noticed a man standing on the porch watching me.  He was dressed casually in blue jeans and a flannel shirt.  A crop of gray hair stuck out from underneath a purple baseball cap.  I couldn’t tell which team’s logo was on the cap, but I guessed from its colors that he was a Diamondbacks fan.  He stood at the top of the porch stairs with his hands in his pockets as if he had all the time in the world.  His expression was difficult to read, so I decided not to try. 

“You Mr. Porter?” he asked as I came near. 

“I sure am,” I replied. I climbed the stairs and extended my hand to him.  “You can call me Robert.”

“Will do.”  He squeezed my hand with a firm grip that made me wince slightly.  “I’m Donald.  Come on in and I’ll show you the place.” 

I followed him inside.  The whole cabin was a strange mix of Southwestern and rustic elements.  Indian patterned rugs covered the walls of the entry hallway while the great room was decorated from one corner to the other with stuffed animal heads.   I’ve never seen the appeal of decorating a house with animal carcasses, but it definitely fit the décor here.

“The bedrooms are upstairs,” Donald informed me as we crossed the room.  “You can pick whichever one you want.”  He pointed to his right.  “Bathroom’s there…garage, back door, kitchen…” 

We entered the kitchen and Donald crossed to the refrigerator.  “We’ve got it all stocked up for you,” he told me, opening the door and revealing the contents.  “If there’s anything in particular you decide you want, though, you’ll need to head back into town to get it.”

I nodded a few times and looked around the room.  I had no desire to drive thirty minutes back into town.  I would make do with what was in the fridge.

“I’m sure it’ll be great,” I assured him.

He opened one of the cabinets and pointed to a pegboard attached to the inside of the door.  There were at least a dozen keys hanging from hooks. 

“They’re all labeled,” he told me. “So, if you need to go somewhere you can lock everything up.  It’s a pretty safe neighborhood, but I’d rather you didn’t take any chances.”

I nodded again because I had no idea what else to say.

“Well,” he said after a few seconds of awkward silence, “if there isn’t anything else you need, I guess I’ll be on my way so you can get settled in.”

“Thank you so much,” I said as I followed him back to the front door.  “Is there a number where I can reach you if there are any problems?”

He told me the number was next to the phone in the kitchen, then left without looking back again.

I closed the door behind him.  For several seconds I simply stood in the center of the living room, uncertain what to do next.  My stomach grumbled again.  I still hadn’t eaten lunch, so I returned to the kitchen.  I needed to get to work on my novel, but my laptop was still in the rental car and I just didn’t feel like going back out to get it.

            After I finished my sandwich, I could no longer avoid the inevitable.  After retrieving my laptop and suitcase from the rental car, I set everything up in the master bedroom upstairs.  The room was furnished with an elegant six-drawer dresser, but I only needed two of the drawers.  I had packed light since most of my time would be spent here in the cabin.    

Crossing the room to the closet, I hoped that Donald and his wife had left behind some hangers.  I turned the knob on the closet door only to find that it was locked.  It caught me a little off guard since this door was the only possible option for a closet in the room.  I checked in the bathroom to see if I had missed something in there, but no. 

Remembering the keys Donald had pointed out before he left, I went to the kitchen to see if there was one for the closet door.  I chuckled as I looked over the pegboard. There were keys for the garage door, the door leading from the house to the garage, the front door, the side door, the storage shed, the laundry room, and several other doors that I hadn’t even realized needed keys, but nothing for the closet in the master bedroom.

Not a big deal, I told myself.  I would just iron the shirt and pants if a situation arose where I actually needed to wear them.  I went back upstairs and sat down in front of my laptop to get to work.

As I waited for the computer to boot up, I sat at the desk and looked out the window at the amazing view of the woods.  There was a glimpse of the lake peeking out invitingly from between the trees.  It only took me a few seconds to realize that I wasn’t going to get any work done, so I decided to go do a little exploring in the hopes that it would get my creative juices flowing.

            An hour and a half later, I returned from my walk.  The exposure to nature had done wonders for my outlook.  I even felt energized with a few ideas for the plot of my novel, which had stalled considerably in the last few months.  I sat down at the computer and wrote for the next hour. 

The novel I was working on was a period piece set in the Old West.  Since I had always been fascinated with cowboys and John Wayne movies, it seemed only logical that one day I would write a western of my own.  The story wasn’t flowing as smoothly as I would have liked, though.  Even with this most recent bit of inspiration, the novel just wasn’t coming together.

I stopped and re-read what I had just written.  It was acceptable, but not earth-shattering.  I sat and stared at the screen.  A few minutes passed, but the brief bout of inspiration was gone.  I read the scene a second time, but had no idea where to go next. 

My thoughts began to wonder, and eventually I found myself looking at the closet door again.  Why was the stupid thing locked?  What could possibly be in there?  What kind of person would even put a lock on a closet door anyway?

I crossed the room to the door and jiggled the knob again.  It was just a stall tactic to avoid facing my novel, but I didn’t care.  Pressing my ear up against the door, I held my breath and waited.  I’m not sure what I expected to hear, but it seemed like a logical thing to do at the time.  After a few seconds, I got down on my hands and knees, flattening my left ear against the carpet in an attempt to see under the door.  Not surprisingly, the closet was completely dark, so I set out to find a flashlight.

After several minutes of rummaging through drawers and looking in various cabinets, I finally found what I was looking for in the garage.  I brought it back upstairs and resumed my position on all fours in front of the door.  I felt hopeful as I squinted into the darkness behind the door, but the flashlight’s beam didn’t reveal anything. 

With a sigh I decided to call Donald and ask him about it in the morning.  I had already wasted close to an hour on this.  It was time to get back to work. 

 

********************

 

The next morning I awoke with the sun pouring through the large bay window.  I didn’t feel rested at all since I had spent most of the night thinking about the closet.  It was intriguing, and I decided it would make a good idea for a novel some other time.  In the present, though, I just wanted to know what was behind the door.

I got a banana from the kitchen downstairs and then sat down at the desk to get to work.  The words wouldn’t come.  Several times throughout the course of the morning I realized I was staring at the closet door again.  I hadn’t written more than a hundred words even though I had been at the computer for at least two hours. 

I carried my laptop across the room and settled in on the floor, sitting with my back against the closet door.  Maybe I wouldn’t be as distracted if I couldn’t see it. A draft blew against my backside from underneath the door, making it impossible to think about anything else.  Rather than working on my novel, I found myself brainstorming ideas of what could be in the closet.  More Southwestern-rustic décor? A safe? A dead body?  The possibilities were staggering.

Eventually it became clear that I wasn’t going to get any work done if I didn’t solve this mystery.  The solution was simple - I would have to break into the closet.  I could apologize to Donald later.  Surely I could come up with a plausible excuse by the end of my stay and, of course, I would be willing to pay for any repairs.  All that mattered now was getting into that room.

The garage provided an assortment of tools that could be useful for the job.  I selected a sledgehammer, but made a mental note of a large ax propped against the wall just in case this attempt didn’t succeed.

When I returned to the master bedroom, I stood in front of the closet and debated with myself for several minutes.  This sort of behavior bordered on manic and I knew it.  But I also knew that I wouldn’t make any progress on my novel until I found out what was so important that it needed to be kept in a locked closet.   I took a deep breath and swung the sledgehammer down at the doorknob with every ounce of strength I could muster.

The wood around the knob began to splinter with a loud cracking sound.  I felt exhilarated.  My second swing brought the sledgehammer against the knob with absolutely no hesitation on my part.  I was surprised by how flimsy the door had turned out to be.  Maybe the room’s contents weren’t as valuable as I had imagined.  It didn’t matter now.  The knob was already lying mangled on the floor and the door was pretty well demolished too.  There was no going back.

I pulled the door open carefully and peered inside.  The light from the room behind me did little to illuminate the space.  Reaching my hand in, I felt along the wall for a light switch. There wasn’t one.  So, I grabbed the flashlight from the desk where I had left it and clicked it on.

Cautiously, I stepped through the doorway.  The beam of light didn’t appear to make much difference in the darkness before me, so I took another tentative step into the room.  I shined the flashlight on the floor and the walls to my left and right, but saw nothing.  There wasn’t a wall anywhere in front of me either.  The closet was apparently deeper than I had anticipated.  I reached my hand out as far as I could but felt only open space.  Quickly reviewing what I remembered of the house’s dimensions, there was no way that this room could be any longer than a couple of feet.  Since the floor in front of me was clear, I took a few more steps into the darkness.

The beam of the flashlight still failed to reveal the back wall.  I looked over my shoulder and calculated that I had already crossed about five feet of floor space with at least that much illuminated in front of me by the flashlight.  Based on the house’s floor plans, I knew that was impossible.

I briefly considered the possibilities.  There was a good chance I was going crazy and this was all in my imagination.  I didn’t believe that, though.  I felt completely lucid.  Of course, I’ve always heard that crazy people don’t realize they’re crazy, so that wasn’t much of a consolation.  

Maybe the house was haunted or in some other way enchanted.  Since I’ve never believed in such things, I didn’t spend much time contemplating that option, either.  All the same, my author’s imagination wouldn’t allow me to completely dismiss the idea as I stepped farther into the room. 

Perhaps the house’s builder had discovered some way to stretch the rules of architectural design.  That option seemed like the most plausible one, and it also filled me with a sense of excitement and curiosity.  How could I pass up the chance to see where this passage might lead?  I simply had no choice but to continue into the darkness until I reached the end.

After several minutes of feeling my way along the wall to my left I glanced back over my shoulder.  The doorway and the bedroom beyond appeared to be about fifty feet away.  My pulse quickened at the prospect.  I continued through the darkness for a few more minutes before I noticed a glowing rectangle several feet ahead of me.  As I approached, it became clear that it was another door with some sort of light shining in around the edges. 

I heard sounds from the other side but couldn’t determine the source.  Placing my ear against the door didn’t help distinguish any of the sounds.  I reached for the knob and took a deep breath.  I had come this far.  It would be ridiculous to turn back now. 

To my surprise, the knob turned easily in my hand. 

I pushed the door open, but my eyes needed several seconds to adjust to the light all around me.  As they did, I was convinced that I actually had gone crazy and I had to resist the urge to run back up the corridor to the lake house.  Something made me stay. 

The scene around me was entirely in black and white, as if I had stepped onto the screen of an old western.  I was standing in the back of an old saloon.  To my left was a piano player plinking out tinny-sounding music and to my right was a bartender wiping down the counter of a long, wooden bar.  The tables around the room were surrounded by men in cowboy attire playing cards.  Several dancing girls were sitting on their laps or standing behind them.

No one seemed to notice me.  As I looked down at my clothes, I realized there was no reason why they should. My clothes were relatively nondescript for the time period – a pair of slacks and a button-up shirt with a cowboy hat to top off the look.  Plus, I was just as monochromatic as the scene around me. 

I looked at the door behind me, where only a few seconds before I had been walking through a dark corridor. The words “Men’s Lavatory” were stenciled in red paint.  I wasn’t certain how many saloons in the Old West actually had men’s rooms, but that research would have to wait until later. 

As fascinated as I was by the scene around me, I also wanted to do a little more exploring.  I slowly crossed the room toward the swinging double doors, being careful not to attract any attention.  I had nothing to worry about, though, since no one gave me a second look.  I pushed the doors apart and stepped out onto the sidewalk. 

It was a warm day and the sun was shining brightly, though everything was still in black and white.  The street was busy with horse-drawn carriages and carts making their way through town, while an assortment of men, women, and children went about their business on the sidewalks.  Everything – the buildings, the clothing, the dirt-covered street – looked exactly as I had imagined they would.  The research I had conducted over the last several months had paid off.

I relaxed a little as I made my way down the sidewalk.  Strangely, I no longer felt a need to figure out what was happening to me.  I nodded and tipped my hat to a group of ladies walking in my direction.  They smiled politely in reply and passed by. 

As I approached a building with a large red sign reading “Wells Fargo”, I heard something in the street to my right that stopped me in my tracks and caused my heart to skip several beats.

“How can you leave me like this, Nathan?”

I turned and spotted a young couple hurrying past a carriage a few feet away from me.  The man was tall and neatly dressed, and the shiny metal star pinned to his vest caught the sunlight occasionally as he walked quickly past where I stood frozen to the sidewalk.

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore, Rebecca,” the man said without slowing his pace.

The young woman was on his heels, taking three or four steps to each of his strides in an attempt to keep up.  She wore a flowered, polonaise dress that accented her graceful figure and drew appreciative looks from every man she passed, though she didn’t seem to notice.  Her long, dark hair, which was styled in flowing curls underneath a regency style bonnet, bounced as she hurried after the man. 

I knew that the dress was called a polonaise because I had recently conducted a significant amount of research on women’s fashions in the Old West for my novel.  I knew other things, too.  I knew that Rebecca had taken on the task of raising her younger brother and sister after her parents had died in a Comanche raid.  I also knew that this couple had only been married a few months.  Nathan had been appointed sheriff a few weeks after the wedding, and now a vicious band of outlaws was coming to kill him.  

I knew these things because I had written them only a few days earlier. 

The couple hurried past me and I decided to follow them.  Before I could move, though, they both suddenly stopped.  In fact, all motion in the street and on the sidewalks stopped as well. 

I only had a few seconds to process this information before a booming voice from somewhere overhead announced: “Rebecca refused to be dissuaded.  She hurried after Nathan with a determination that surprised even herself.”

I instantly recognized the words: It was the narrative I’d written for this very scene.  The narrator’s voice was familiar, but it took several seconds for me to recognize it as that of actor James Earl Jones.  I had never given much thought to who would narrate my novels, but this didn’t feel like the right choice for this story.

The scene on the street began to move again and I hurried to catch up with Nathan and Rebecca.  I was curious to see where the scene was going.  It was a crucial scene that would eventually move my characters toward the story’s climax, but I had been struggling to put it all together.  Maybe I could let the characters tell me where they needed to go next.

When the couple reached the sheriff’s office, Nathan climbed the first few steps and then turned to face his wife, towering over her.   

“There’s no need to discuss it further,” he told her. There was no anger in his expression, only concern and a hint of fear.  I know, because I had written it that way.  “You’re taking Beth and Jared and you’re getting out of town with the others before the Dalton gang rides in.  That’s final.”

Before Nathan had finished speaking, the peaceful scene on the street suddenly shifted.  People began frantically hurrying in and out of buildings, loading already stuffed carts and carriages with boxes and suitcases. The quiet lull of afternoon conversation I had noticed earlier was replaced with shouts, crying babies, and frightened pleas for loved ones to hurry. 

I was surprised by the sudden shift in the atmosphere around me and realized that my readers would have felt the same way.  I made a mental note: establish a more frantic feeling for the scene from the beginning.

“But where will I go?” Rebecca pleaded, tears streaming down her cheeks. “You’re my whole world.  I don’t want to go anywhere without you.”

Again the scene stopped.  I waited for the narrator’s voice, but none came.  I was disappointed.  I needed guidance, and I had been hoping these characters would provide it. Something had felt wrong about this scene when I wrote it, but I just couldn’t put my finger on the problem.

I turned and looked at the couple in hopes that they would offer a solution.  Still I was stumped, so I moved closer.

Frozen tears glistened in Rebecca’s eyes as if she had been sculpted out of wax.  As I stared at the desperate, pleading expression on her face, it hit me.  She was the problem! The character I had created was meant to be a fiery, independent frontier woman.  At this point in the novel, she had already saved her family’s farm after her parents were killed, she had begun to raise her younger brother and sister with the help of an elderly aunt, and she had survived a serious bout of pneumonia.  The words she had just uttered made no sense coming from the lips of the woman I had developed.

No sooner had I made this realization than the scene began to change again.  This time the characters all began to retrace their steps as if someone had hit a rewind button.  When the scene began to play again, the townspeople were frantically hurrying and packing to leave instead of strolling leisurely through town, and Nathan and Rebecca were back on the street coming toward me.

“How can you leave me like this, Nathan?” Rebecca asked again. This time there was no plaintive tone in her voice, only frustration and anger.  Her strides were slightly longer and definitely more determined than before. 

The narrator’s voice again broke in with my exposition, only this time the voice belonged to actor Morgan Freeman.  I nodded my head a few times and looked at the scene around me.  It fit.

Nathan delivered his lines as he had before, but this time Rebecca’s response was different.

“No, that is not final!” she declared, climbing a few steps in front of her husband so they were close to the same height.  She placed her hands on her hips, looked him square in the eyes, and said, “I’m sending Beth and Jared with Aunt Amy, but I’m staying here with you.  I’m as good a marksman as any man in this town and I will fight for the people I love! No gang of outlaws is going to run me out of town!”              

I felt goose bumps tingle up my arms.  This was the character I had envisioned when I created her! 

There was a short pause as Nathan considered his wife’s declaration.  I wasn’t sure exactly what he was thinking because this was uncharted territory in my story now.  I could figure it out later.  Nathan took Rebecca’s face in both of his hands and kissed her tenderly. 

As the couple stood embracing on the steps, I turned and hurried back up the sidewalk toward the saloon.  I had some serious work to do. 

I prayed the men’s lavatory would be unoccupied.