It Will Be Perfect Tomorrow

“Okay, I will write today. Two hours. No exceptions.” I said to myself as I look at my watch and nod. It was 8:45, so it made sense in my head to start at 9. Perfect. 9 to 11 isn’t bad; I will be able to work on other things later! I decided that a cup of coffee would be a great addition to starting to write again and went downstairs to brew a cup.

The utensils were all laid out in front of me. Brewing a cup was easy. I looked at the clock. 8:55AM. It was almost time for me to start writing. I grabbed the cup, went upstairs and booted my computer. I had the perfect idea to get me started: a girl who was homesick. “Simple idea…I live that reality everyday.” I chuckled and opened up my word document.

“She looked out…the window solemnly.” I said to myself as I clicked and clacked away at my keyboard. My eyebrows furrowed and I pressed backspace. Let’s try again.

“I miss my mother! She cried harrowingly to her friend,” I threw my hands up as I said this and pursed my lips at the thought of that emotion. My head cocked to the side. Is ‘harrowingly’ even a word?

I pressed backspace. Now blank, the page stared at me. The prompt was still there to remind me what I needed to do, but I was scratching my head, unsure of where and how to begin. The thoughts racing across my head gave me bits and pieces of what I could write but none that were spectacular! They did not have that ‘oomph’ factor to even be considered on the paper.

My eyes moved over to the clock on the edge of my screen. 9:20AM. I thought about taking a break, but my coffee was warm and unfinished. Perhaps I need to change my prompt. I put my head in my hands and thought. And thought. Until I looked up and time seemed to move even faster now—it was 9:40AM. The cursor blinked menacingly.

It had been blinking for almost half an hour now and I still couldn’t string anything together on paper. My moaning and groaning definitely caught the attention of my husband, who walked over and put a hand on my shoulder and looked at me worryingly. Leaning over to feel the warmth of his hand took away some of the stress but the blank page reminded me that I was useless.

Sitting up straight, I decided to try again. Using the time I have is all I can do. Whatever I’m able to get on this paper is the best I’ve got. I have to write to get better after all, and drafting is always the worst part. I muttered this while lowering my head onto the desk and thinking of the perfect first line to get my creative juices flowing. Once I looked up, it was 11AM and I had essentially “run out of time”. I had to do something else. I looked at the white screen that glared at me with an intensity that prompted me to close the screen once time was over. Solution-oriented as he always is, my husband walked over to me and proposed getting me a notebook. “The traditional way might be the best way to get you to write again.”

I would have nodded at his suggestion but I already had a slew of untouched notebooks that were expressly bought for this purpose. I have a notebook for fluff writing, angsty writing; notebooks that carried vocabulary I promised myself I would incorporate into my writing; I even had notebooks full of character mappings that I was dying to implement in anything I could write. “I don’t know…maybe a tablet would get me writing—something cheap, you know? With a keyboard. I could carry that to a café and do some damage there.”

He didn’t seem to keen on the idea of getting something that pricey for a singular purpose but seeing how much I was struggling, he agreed. “You can use mine.” He simply tossed his iPad and Bluetooth keyboard to me to write on. I felt renewed with a new sense of inspiration and instead of a café, I went to the living room to try and get started this time.

I changed my prompt this time around to something that might be a bit more stimulating: a time I had lost something precious to me. That’s an easy one. I could get started on that. I opened up my document file and thought to all the times I’d lost something: cash, keys, my phone, and even my siblings. The opportunities swam around me and I was eager to combine ideas together and get started.

The ideas flowed together so well, but at the sight of the blank document in front of me, my hands froze. My hands hovered over all the keys on the keyboard and trying to press a key felt…wrong? A small tinge of doubt hit me. “That’s a basic story. And so boring.” My jaw tightened at the first lines I wrote: My eyes glistened at the sight of my treasure. It was my precious.

I quickly erased it and grimaced. Deciding it was time for me to take a break, I turned off the tablet and went to do something else—anything else—for the day. “I need to read, actually. I think reading will stimulate me.” I told my husband and picked out a book to focus my energy on. I can’t write without reading after all. My eyes scanned through the pages of the book and I envied the way the prose on the page. “This is what I want to do,” I flipped through the pages resentfully before I was done reading it.

I wrote down the ideas I saw from the book. The writer used metaphors so I can also use metaphors. They wrote a character so deranged I sympathized with them. The character was misunderstood and wanted something.

I’m going to write this down in my story tomorrow.

Tomorrow the lines will be perfect. It will come to me.