Please Enter A Story

My cursor blinks.

Blink.

Blink.

Blink.

Like a metronome, the melodic tick-tock lulls me into a state of calm…panic.

Tick-tock.

Blink blink.

Water. I need some water. The kitchen tile is cold against my bare feet. I press my cup against the ice lever, and the fridge grinds. Ice clatters into my stainless steel water bottle. The bottle was a gift from my husband for my forty-second birthday. It is laser engraved with just one more chapter, an open book beneath the words, and dandelion puffs floating around the text.

I grab the plastic lemon from inside the fridge door and squirt a healthy dollop into the cup. I sip slowly. The cold burns my throat. I grab the last donut from the counter. My favorite. A maple log with indulgently thick frosting, filled with Bavarian cream.

My office is chilly this morning. I drape a thick fleece blanket around my body, sit in my chair, and stare at the screen. The blinking cursor mocks me. The blank page might as well be laughing.

Blink.

Blink.

Blink.

“Okay, Nicole,” I say to myself. “This is due by Friday. Come up with something. Come up with anything. Just write one word. Any word.”

My fingers rest on the keyboard, lightly tapping the keys but without committing to fully pressing one to placate the blinking cursor. My fingers act on their own desire, and I type:

Once upon a time.

I let out a heavy sigh. “Absolutely not. Fairy tales? For crying out loud.”

Once upon a time.

Delete.

Ralphie, my golden doodle, barks at a neighbor running on the sidewalk.

“Ralphie, Mommy needs to focus here! I am trying to become an author, not just a middle-aged woman who stares at a blinking Google Doc on her lunch hour,” I admonish the dog.

He sulks and retreats to his bed in the corner of my office and lazily chews on a bone. I crack my knuckles, stretch my shoulders, and dig deep.

I type.

It was a dark and stormy night.

“Lord no,” I say. “What are you even doing, woman?”

Every Thursday night, I wedge myself into a desk built for young adults at the community college with other people my age. They share the same desire to see their name on the cover of something worthy. Written on the whiteboard every week is the same sentence: Show, don’t tell.

It is written in blue dry-erase marker, and the passing weeks have faded the mantra. Now it looks more like shoe done yell.

I can hear my professor in the back of my mind, chastising me.

Trust the reader, Nicole. They are smarter than we give them credit for. They want to work for the story as much as you want to write it!

It was a dark and stormy night.

De-freaking-lete.

I take a wolfish bite of my donut, and a glob of Bavarian cream cascades onto my keyboard. The weight of it pins down the letter H. I wonder briefly if I can use that as the first sentence of my story. Perhaps something abstract?

I swipe the cream off the keyboard with my finger.

“Ralphie, here boy,” I call.

He trots over and slurps the sweet treat from my fingertips.

Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

I press my back against the tall office chair and wiggle into a more comfortable position. I line my fingers up against the smooth keys, finding the bumps on the F and J keys. I wonder how many other people start this way. Do other people use the bumps, too?

The pathos and snake plants that adorn my desk look like they could use more direct sunlight and a much-needed drink. Around them are artwork and photos of shipwrecks and ocean shores, each chosen with the intent of making my space feel creative and welcoming.

I await the spark.

Impatiently.

I swear the cursor winks at me.

They say everyone has a story.

“Wait, that’s not awful,” I say. I let out the breath I didn’t know I was holding.

They say everyone has a story.

Everyone has a story.

No.

Blink.

Blink.

Blink.

I press on, literally.

They say everyone has a story, but not everyone has two.

I take a deep breath and scream at the top of my lungs, “Everyone has a story! I have a story!” Ralphie opens one eye and looks at me cautiously. “Sorry, buddy. Mommy is having a meltdown. I’m okay.”

I slam the backspace key hard enough to make the keyboard slide. The letters on the backspace and delete keys are nearly worn away.

I type:

It was a Thursday and a forty-two-year-old woman cannot come up with a single idea. A single sentence. There is no plot. No outline. No framework. She cannot stop talking to herself. There is a sticky H key. A snoring doodle and is someone cutting their grass next door?

I stand up, and Mr. Broward is indeed cutting his grass. I open my office window to allow the scent of freshly cut grass to mingle and inspire me. Future me will regret this choice when I have a searing migraine from my desire for fresh, sweetly scented air.

I press CTRL+A and pound the backspace key.

Blink.

Blink.

Blink.

Reaching for my writer’s notebook, I flip through the pages.

The moon hung like silver…

I turn the page.

Sometimes you have to get lost to find yourself.

I turn to another.

She was beautiful, but she didn’t know it yet.

“Jesus,” I whisper. "What was I thinking with this?"

Another page.

What if the real treasure was the friends we…

“No.”

I keep flipping.

The handwriting changes somewhere around the middle of the notebook. The loops get smaller. The words crowd the margins. Whole paragraphs are crossed out. A few sentences survive, circled twice, then abandoned.

I stop reading and make a decision. I close my eyes and flip to a random page. Friday is tomorrow. Whatever I land on, I’ll write. I open my eyes.

The page is blank. Well, almost.  

In the bottom corner, there’s a black scribble. I remember making it. My favorite pen had stopped flowing, so I’d put the tip against my tongue and scribbled until the ink came back.

In my writer's brain, the page was ruined for ideas. Perfectly good for a grocery list or a to-do list, though.

I stare at the scribble.

I type:

The writer, NOT the author, wants to quit this silly little midlife crisis. Why am I torturing myself?

Delete.

The scribble looks like a lotus flower.

My fingers find a rhythm.

The lotus grew from the mud, reaching toward the light. Much like *MC NAME LATER’s* relationship with her mother. You have to walk through the mud to get to the light.

I rip out the page with the scribble, crunch it into a ball, and throw it against my office wall. Ralphie, ever present, thinks we’re playing. He retrieves the paper ball from the floor and drops it in my lap. Mindlessly, I toss it again. His nails skitter on the hardwood floor. I toss it again.

The lotus grew from the mud, reaching toward the light. Much like MC NAME LATER’s relationship with her mother. You have to walk through the mud to get to the light.

“Well, Ralphie, time’s up, bud. I’m out of time for today. I quit,” I say. I gently close my laptop. Ralphie follows me with his soulful eyes.

“Google Docs wins.”

I reach down and scratch behind his ears. He sighs and rests his head against my knee. I pick up the crumpled notebook page and smooth it against the edge of my desk, looking at the wrinkled scribble.  

I open my laptop. The blinking menace is waiting.  

I type:

My cursor blinks.

Blink.

Blink.

Blink.