Creativity’s empty plate

An empty plate of crumbs sat next to the author as he flipped between tabs, between the promise of a new story and the group chats where writing didn't occur, but the pieces prior to writing usually did. Brainstorming, often sugar-fueled, occurred in that other tab, and it never occured alone. No, somehow in spite of writing being considered the loneliest art, there were many writers that put their time into helping other writers generate and add onto various ideas.

This writer, although his plate was empty save crumbs, was creatively starved. Unsure of what to write, where to go in his story, whether he was even capable of creating characters that felt like people rather than paper cutouts, his sentences failed to be grammatically correct. Subject verb adjective object. In theory, he could do that fine, but in practice he overused 'to be' verbs, saying who a character was rather than having their actions show who they were.

The others in his writing group chats didn't seem to have this problem - they had problems with words, or character motivations, but they knew who their characters were. This author didn't. He was just alone at a coffee shop, trying to make words typed so that he could consider the afternoon productive. By trying to do so, he was wasting electricity, likely taking up a seat that would otherwise be occupied by someone who had actual work to conduct, an accountant or lawyer with spreadsheets who had instead reluctantly taken their beverages to go.

But instead this twenty-something writer sat at a counter, crumb-filled plate in front of him because he didn't want to engage in the observation or social skills necessary to figure out where to bring the no-longer-being-used plate. He thought about the trek home, how he would have to reverse engineer how he had gotten downtown to get back to his parents' suburban home, only he wasn't all that confident in his ability to do so in the dark. He thought about the saying of write what you know and the similar one to instead write what you like. He didn't write what he liked because he didn't like what he was writing. He sometimes did, when he had help, but asking for help from internet strangers felt like admitting defeat to the idea of inspiration. Logically, an idea provided by someone else would still have to be transmitted out by his writing, but he didn't trust that he could provide anything worth reading at the moment anyway.

Maybe he should have never left his bedroom floor. He had forced himself to leave the comfort of home in hopes maybe people-watching at a coffee shop might inspire him, but the only seat available at the shop was a window seat along the counter. The window seat only provided a view of the gray city he loved and loathed at various times, no people passing by he could project lives onto, although he did write some colorful metaphor-laden descriptions of pigeons taking flight from a rooftop, following wind currents in circles the same way this writer's thoughts circled before landing on the same roof they had originated from.

Not that the writer's thoughts were on a roof - would that make an interesting story? A story narrated by the roof of a building, far too accustomed to the weight and waste of pigeons and precipitation, ignorant and uncaring of the human goings-on underneath its shelter. Maybe the roof disliked being pooped upon by pigeons, but since it was an inanimate object, the closest to protest possible was complaining narration. Could that be a comedy? Maybe a particularly nasty storm would scare the pigeons away from the roof, seeking shelter inside the building instead, and the roof, happy initially, would come to miss the sound of chirping and splats of defecation.

Maybe the writer ought to take the idea as a win, the fact he had come up with an idea akin to having eaten a light lunch. Maybe he ought to take that empty plate next to him and figure out where it went, and then seriously contemplate returning to his suburban existence. Only, when would he find himself in this exact position again? Maybe he ought to chase the idea until he wrote himself into a corner, which he inevitably would, and only then, in the early evening, return to his parents' house. He tried, typing and shutting out the world around him until he had to be informed by a cafe worker that the place closed in fifteen minutes. The writer shrugged his winter coat back onto his body, returned his laptop to its place inside his backpack, shrugged said backpack back on, and started thinking seriously about how he would return home.

The weather was snowing, our writer had seen that much from within the warmth of the coffee shop, but he had been in a hurry to try to cross the street to the train station that he hadn't zippered his jacket. He ran for the warmth of the train station, noticing when he arrived that indeed some smart pigeons had sought shelter from the snow within the train station. The young man took the escalator, justifying his inaction as conserving energy to keep warm rather than the laziness he knew it to truly be. He missed the train, waited for the next one.

The writer entered the train on autopilot. He felt like a fraud, not using his time to hone his craft or peoplewatch or... what would he do on the train that he wasn't doing? Why did he feel so miserable? He wasn't sure, except he was paranoid people would bump into his backpack and resent him. Or his laptop could in theory get stolen and he might never know since his winter coat meant he couldn't feel the device digging into his back like he could in warmer times.

The train's travel ended early, as the railroad had construction occurring on it. He had to wait with the crowd for a shuttle bus, which would lead him to yet another train, which would then either if he made it on time have him rushing to catch the final bus home, or ordering a city-subsidized rideshare...

He did all these transportation-related transitions. He ran and was able to catch the final bus to his neighborhood, only to wipe-out on black ice in his driveway during the final stretch home to his parents' place. His backpack landed on his back, his forearms and knees taking the brunt of the fall. "Fuck!" The young man shouted in pain, trying to just focus on getting out of the cold, back to the warmth of his parents' house.

He gingerly, slowly, successfully walked to the front door, still freshly hurt from the recent impact to feel aware of the fact staying upright and balanced on the ice was in fact an accomplishment.

"Joe, how was the cafe? Did you meet anyone while you were out and about?"

"No, Mom, but I slipped in the driveway so I think I'll try taking a hot bath. My laptop hit me on the way down." His mom winced in empathy, and the man returned said backpack to his room before doing what he said he would. He needed a bath.

The bath burned, soothing the cold and numbing where the laptop had hit his back, hot water stinging his scraped knees as he kept his scraped arms out of the tub. He was home.