Die in Tune

As a writer, for me, every aspect of my story becomes a goal I have to achieve and a failure I shall never have. Every aspect counts: character, whether their feelings, personalities, pasts, futures, appearance, friendships, enemies, love life or academic life; the space where the narration occurs, with a very accurate description; the time, whether in the present, past or future; the narration as a whole, more specifically what happens in each chapter and what the beginning and the ending will be; and last but not least, the rhetorical figures used to add some beauty to your work of art in the form of a book.

When you fail to come up with any sort of idea for any of the aspect, you have a problem that could eventually lead to stress if a mental barrier forms between your will to write and your imagination and creativity.

Ladies and gentleman let me introduce you to a little thing I am not so familiar with, but fear it with all my heart: the almighty writer’s block. It’s inevitable, like a disease: nobody wants it, but unfortunately and eventually we have to face it.

Why am I wasting my time writing about writer’s block? You may ask. Well, the thing is, since the last part I wrote where my character goes to his old home to find another family residing there, my mind went blank.

I couldn’t write anything about my fictional city. And it wasn’t fun at all.

Whenever I tried to think about it, all I could think about was what I had written up to that point. Nothing else. If I didn’t recover or escape from the writer’s block soon, I’d have to go back to…

I love you, don’t you love me?

…my previous drugs, my previous addictions.

No, I must be strong. I mustn’t give in to any of it. I mustn’t.

Alcohol won’t make me strong. It will make me weak. I don’t want to be weak.

I need to find other ways to distract myself. I need to.

Sports, I thought. That was an idea. I turned my head to my right from where I was laying in my bed and saw my kind of dusty and half empty basketball ball. We had a hoop in the door of our garage which I hadn’t used in months. I remember how I used to play it almost every afternoon back at my old house. Sometimes alone, scoring some hoops, sometimes with my dad playing a little one on one. But those days were years ago, a long time before I entered junior high, and a long time before I entered high school.

I got up and grabbed my ball. It was time to relive some old memories of dribbling the ball in front of a hoop. Not exactly the best substitute for writing, but it was better than lying on my bed thinking on ways to escape the inescapable writer’s block.

The hoop is his opponent.

It stares him in the eye, mocking him, I thought referring to myself in the third person as if there was one of those fast-talking sport TV anchors in my head narrating the entire game. He dribbles to ball to the left, and then to the right, looking at his target with his competitive stare, not leaving it even once, fearing it will leave his sight if he does.

He’s going for the big shot.

He takes a big leap forward.

He shoots.

He scores!The anchor in my head narrated that as the imaginary referee, also present in my mind, blew the whistle loudly signaling the end of the match.

I had been doing that for the past hour or even more than that. I needed to give the anchor and the referee in my head a break. They deserved one. I sat on the ground and drank some water from the bottle I had brought with me. It felt good to know that I could still score as well as I used to.

In a way, playing basketball was like writing: every aspect was important. In basketball, you had to be focused yet skilled; you had to attack and defend. In writing, you had to be focused yet creative and imaginative. You had to take risks yet play it safe with some clichés at times.

They were so different. They were so similar.

The whole neighborhood was quiet, too quiet for my taste. Everybody was at home: moms were cooking meals, dads were watching the news or football games on TV and reading the daily newspaper, and kids were in their rooms alone in the internet for many hours in a row. Nobody ever left their house anymore.

We are an alienated society. Alienated by the media, alienated by everything they feed us, I thought. We are the witnesses. My thought scared me. It reminded me of how strangely parallel with the real world my fictional world was becoming.

I decided to sit in front of the garage door, facing it, and throwing the basketball ball against the door, catching it and repeating the process again. Everything we do in life starts with a simple process which is repeated over and over again. A simple repetitive procedure. So simple, and yet very intricate.

A car engine roared in the background. I turned around, because my back was facing the driveway and I saw a taxi. My dad was in the backseat on his mobile phone. He was still on the phone as he paid the taxi driver and got out of the backseat, struggling with his two suitcases.

One of them he had bought in Paris and it was filled with stickers from the multiple airports he had been in. I have lost count of the countries he has been to. The other one was bought here. It was a simple one, didn’t have any stickers and it was slightly smaller than the other one. But for some reason it was more special, because I had given it to him on his birthday a couple of years ago.

He was such a busy guy, speaking about business in his mobile phone and managing to carry both suitcases a few steps. That was my cue to get up and give a hand. I walked with a fast pace and watched him hanging up. When he saw me walking up to him he said “Hey kiddo.” He gave me a hug. I hadn’t seen him in weeks. Was it two? Or was it three? I have lost count.

“Hey dad,” I replied. I helped him carry one of the suitcases until the doorstep. He was still behind when I dropped the suitcase on the mat at the entrance that said “Welcome”. He was looking at the hoop, walking slowly to the door.

“Were you shooting some hoops?” He asked. I nodded and started opening the door to put the luggage inside. He smiled. “Haven’t seen you playing in years…” Nor have I seen you, I thought. He then suggested something that left me a bit surprised “I haven’t played much either. “Tell you what: let me just put these things inside and then we can play some one on one.” I nodded smiling a bit.

He went inside and I continued meddling around with my ball. I started doing some practice shots, ending my mental anchor’s and imaginary referee’s break. They probably are pissed at me for not giving them a longer resting period, especially due to the fact they don’t get a salary.

Well, I was thinking too much about imaginary things and before I knew it, my dad came out the door strutting this fierce walk that would get him a place in any big runway walk. Okay, I might be exaggerating, but seriously, the confidence he had in his walk was quite intimidating. On top of it all he had some style in his walk. Like a murderer has in his job, I thought.

He was still wearing his navy business suit, but his shirt was unbuttoned at the top, the neck tie was very loose and the shirt was untucked. He actually looked like a bad boy ready for a competition. I was shocked.

He asked me to pass him the ball and said “Let’s see if I can still score like I used to.” He dribbled the ball until he was a bit distant from the hoop and aimed the ball at it.

He shoots,narrated the anchor in my head.

He scores.

He turned to me “Ready?”

That was the first time we were bonding in years. It was fun. I ended up beating him, but it was a close game. I have to admit, I did a little victory dance that I regret, but I was happy and couldn’t help it.

Back to school on another average Monday morning. I wanted so badly to lock myself in my room and do nothing but write the entire morning, instead of going to school. I had gotten some inspiration for my story, but I had to forget my notebook on the precise day I got free from my writer’s block. I didn’t write about my sacred world anywhere except in that notebook. It was my precious.

I took note of my ideas during lunch on a napkin, so that I could write them after using my description skills, which I still wasn’t quite used to. I think most people have a hard time with description and dialogue when they start, but that’s just my opinion.

I wrote my ideas in topics.

I was about to write something about Harriet when I heard someone stand in front of me on my usually solitary lunch table. I folded the napkin, hiding my ideas. Kaleb the Slitter was my secret alter-ego. Someone that only came alive in the form of words.

After all, everything is a word.

I looked up once every evidence of what I had been doing was carefully hidden and saw Harriet right in front of me. She made an attempt to smile timidly, though it came out strange. She wasn’t used to smile normally, I guessed. “Can I sit here? And can I continue to read your…nothing?” She giggled a bit at the last word.

I looked at her and said “Yeah, you can sit, but I didn’t bring my notebook…” She made said “Oh,” and then sat down in the previously empty plastic chair. As she adjusted her position on the seat, I found it weird eating lunch with another person. I usually sat alone. That’s how I like it, I thought.

She started eating the food on her tray. I had barely touched my plate. The food that day was pizza and as much as I love pizza, I hated the one at school. It had cheese melted on top of mushrooms and corn and some weird ingredient I couldn’t recognize. It didn’t look tempting at all.

She asked me, before taking a huge bite off her slice “Aren’t you going to eat that?” She looked genuinely shocked. I shook my head. She then said “Too bad you didn’t bring your notebook. I’d love to see what you made my character like!” She kept messing with her hair as she took bit bites off her pizza and looked at me. She didn’t wear any make up or put any products in her hair. She seemed like the kind of person who would put some subtle eyeliner, but apparently she wasn’t. I was trying to read her, so that I could get some inspiration for my story.

I could tell she was sarcastic, based on the few conversations I had had with her. I also could tell she had problems of some sort to be going to a psychiatrist. She was discreet but deep down she liked the attention. She just avoided giving any signs of actually wanting it. She preferred being mysterious and not trusting people at the first time. She studies people carefully as well, probably to get a better look into their personalities. She was naïve and believed in true love, but hasn’t found her prince charming. And she was shy, but that was one of those obvious things, you would notice at first glance.

She looked at me with some indignation and asked “Why are you looking at me like that? It’s kind of weird…” I noticed that I had been staring at her for quite a while. I immediately turned away. She laughed and said “Don’t worry. I do that a lot too. Trying to read people.”

I looked back at her and said “Really? You can’t possible read me.” She laughed a bit and took another bite off her pizza. She didn’t seem to mind the taste of the thing at all, which was rather strange. When she was finished, she wiped her mouth on the napkin.

“Well, you can’t seem to stop writing, which is a clear sign of creativity. You also visit a psychiatrist like me, which indicates that you either have problems or your parents are sending you there, because they think you have problems. You don’t enjoy greasy cafeteria food like these delicious slices of pizza. Oh and did I mention that you are quite a solitary person?” Okay, that was rather easy to figure out about me, but I had to admit that she was good.

“Okay, you are good, but that’s too superficial…” I could tell that about any person with just a glance actually, but most people couldn’t. She rolled her eyes, but didn’t respond with a good comeback like I was expecting. Sometimes some people wondered how I could read so well into other people’s lives. I guessed it was because I was so used to writing how characters feel in stories, therefore I could read people so well. I would also watch lots of movies with decent acting. Or maybe it was because I couldn’t comprehend my own life, so I’d try to comprehend the ones of those around me as a way to console myself.

Possibly in an attempt to change subject, or to hide her pride in herself, she grabbed her messenger bag and got a geography book. She flipped the pages until she reached the page she was looking for. “Hey, did you understand this thing about precipitation? I knew it back at my old school, but over here, Mrs. Etheridge confused the hell out of me…” Well precipitation was quite easy. Not my strongest point, but I understood it.

I hadn’t actually noticed she was in my class, but I didn’t notice anyone in my class, to be quite honest. I tried to do my best to explain to her the different types of precipitation (convection, frontal activity, tropical activity and orographic effects) and how each one was formed, and because of that had to explain the atmospheric pressure (both high and low pressure) and the humidity (both relative and absolute) and before I knew it, the bell rang, indicating yet another long period of classes. I wasn’t sure if Harriet understood my fast explanation, but that was the least of my concerns.

For some reason, I felt like everywhere I went, Harriet was there. Let’s take it one step at a time: I was in Biology class and she had it in the same period as me; I crossed paths with her in the hallways between World History and Chemistry and now I was at Dr. Murphy’s office and she enters the door yet again and sits beside me. It was beginning to feel weird.

She looked at me and saw the notebook in my hands. “Hey. So, can I read it?” She had curiosity in her eyes and something else I couldn’t read somehow. I handed her the notebook and eyed her reaction carefully as she flipped it open and began reading from where she had left off the last time. We didn’t say anything for quite a while, until…”Kaleb the Slitter?” She nearly had a laugh attack.

I didn’t understand what was funny. She was already calming down, when she looked again at the name and laughed again. I looked at her with indignation as I often do when I see people laughing hysterically and don’t understand the reason why they do so. She said “Sorry, but your lack of originality in your alter-ego just took me by surprise in comparison to your extremely creative fictional world.” I blushed a bit and immediately questioned myself why I was blushing.

“I was never good at coming up with names,” I said a bit embarrassed. It was one of my weakest points in writing.

She nodded in comprehension and agreed saying “It’s quite hard to find the perfect name for a certain character. I like picking names that fit the character’s personality…”

“You write?” Her revelation left me surprised.

She nodded and said “Not as good as you though. I don’t have such a broad imagination.” She then continued reading, indicating another pause in our conversation. Strands of her light brown hair kept falling on her face as she brushed them away so they wouldn’t block her view. She was really focusing on the story.

She asked abruptly when she was on one of the pages that I remembered so clearly a question I was already expecting “Is this in anyway inspired by events and personalities of the ‘real world’?”

I didn’t want to lie, because eventually it would become pretty obvious that it was, but I didn’t want to tell the truth either. “Some parts…Why?” I guess that answer was good.

“Well, because you’re an unfaithful guy in this fictional land. I was wondering if that applied to reality…” She looked at me with a smirk. She had no idea. And for some reason her smirk hid something else behind it other than the fact that it was mocking me. It was as if she was…flirting with me.

Flirting like…

I love you, don’t you love me?

Well, it doesn’t matter now. I don’t want to remember, just want to forget. But Harriet somehow reminded me of every mistake I had done in the past. “So, I haven’t reached the part where I appear, but will you make me part of the rebellion?” She asked full of interest. I thought a bit and nodded. After all, I haven’t talked much about the rebellion so now I had a reason to talk about it.

I had found my escape to writer’s block.