Jimmy Wordsmith Vs. The Writer's Block

Jim swished his tea leaves into a flurry with eight swirls of his favourite teaspoon. The gentle clinking of the metal against the side of the cup provided some welcome contrast to the silent stillness in his kitchen on this Sunday afternoon. Returning his buttocks to the grooves in his computer chair, he’d tap a few letters, then delete them. Read something, watch a YouTube video, watch pornography, play some lo-fi. He even tried a little yoga, but today was turning out to be another day of staring blankly at a blinking cursor. Nothing was getting the creativity flowing.

All day long, the tap-tap-tapping on the window was driving Jim crazy. Savouring the warm hug of the vanilla notes in his brew, he desperately tried to conjure an idea - he needed food. His skin was becoming cling film on his aching bones, an extremely unwelcome sensation. Remembering the age-old saying, “We must suffer for our art,” Jim wondered why he ever became a bloody writer. No new ideas meant no money, and no money meant no food. No food meant… well, we all know what no food means. He should have become a lawyer like his Mother had said. Making a mental note never to tell her that, he reminisced disdainfully about how she loved to be correct.

Who did that block think it was, taunting him all the time? Tapping his window hour after hour with its silly little cartoon arms and ridiculously animated eyebrows. Hadn’t it done enough damage? He was starving to death at his keyboard. The writer’s block stood there, looking sadly through the window pane and wanting to be let in like a neglected puppy. The audacity was unfathomable.

Jim staggered hazily to the window and pulled it up. As he opened it, a giant gust of wind came, and the block came with it. It skipped past him on its silly little cartoon legs and came inside as if it owned the place. It plonked itself at his computer desk and began to make itself at home in his chair grooves. Jim could barely contain the annoyance simmering within him as the block stared at his screen with its bleak expression. It was imitating him, mocking him.

The wind chilled the apartment and had the rolled-up blinds clattering against the wall. The clouds looked dark and menacing, but the breeze was nice. A refreshing change. He tried to remember the last time he’d felt anything other than the stagnant apartment air - he couldn’t. Looking down in a daze, concrete steps stretched out in front of him like a concertina, bridging his apartment and the sidewalk below. As tired as he was, he barely considered what an odd place for a staircase this was. Too busy gladly letting the raindrops smooth over flakes of dry skin on his face. The block could have his space, but it couldn’t have him. He descended the steps into the waiting world, searching for a new place to write from.

Wrapping his jacket around his body with his hands, he braved the gloomy storm. He plodded the pavement with his notebook close to his chest, nestled inside his jacket like a sick baby bird, to protect it from the unforgiving elements. The rain quickly seeped through the fabric of his shoes and dampened his socks.

A vintage coffee shop with swirly gold writing on the windows and mahogany woodwork popped out against the grey town. The building looked warm, a far cry from his Ikea catalogue apartment. He pushed open the front door, setting off the satisfying clinking of the welcome bell that demanded the barista’s attention. Aside from the barista, the establishment was empty of customers. Jim figured it was because of the rain; few folks trawl the streets on a rainy afternoon. Then, not many folks have a bizarre, animated block following them who’s coincidentally insistent on ruining their lives - that was just Jim.

At the end of the room was an inviting table with a lit oil lamp illuminating the menus. So he decided to sit. Pulling the scraggly notepad from his jacket pocket, he flopped through the pages. Blue ink had bled across a couple of them. The jacket he had hurriedly pulled from his coat rack was merely a hoodie, not waterproof in the slightest. He took out his pen, and while clutching a clump of his hair with his other hand, willed himself to write something. But as the first lashings of blue creativity flowed from his nib, he heard the doorbell go.

The barista tipped his hat at the new guest. And the block clambered onto the chair across from him with a smug little grin. It sighed and drummed its stubby fingers on the table. Jim tried to ignore it and push on with his work, but it was about as easy as ignoring a splinter in the eye. He shook, chaotic lines darting around his pen nib like swarming bees. He pushed hard into the paper and tried to will himself to write something, anything. It was still futile. Sweat boiled on his brow, and a droplet descended onto his page. Jim stood and stormed out of the coffee shop, leaving the block sipping his macchiato alone.

He walked through the rain until he reached an all too stereotypical-looking petrol station. Eerie again, no people about at all. How odd, he thought. At pump number 12, his car rested. It looked aching and stagnant, like it had been at the rust-smeared petrol pump for some time. Waiting idly and sadly for someone to climb in and move its weary joints. Driving off, he gave no real thought to how it had arrived at the petrol station across the road from the coffee shop or who had paid for the petrol. It was shocking, considering his tank had been empty for almost a week. How did this kind stranger obtain his keys? Which were always in the wicker basket just behind his front door.

Driving into the thick grey mist that covered the town, his valiant window wipers battled furiously to give him a vision of the road ahead. Whether it was to save him or themselves from meeting their fate in a fiery accident remains uncertain, but Jim liked to think it was at least both. As the mist cleared, the local history museum stood before him. It was gleaming in the glaze of rainwater left behind on its exterior. If he didn't know the building so well from school trips as a boy, he would have sworn Olympus itself had presented to honour him with its beauty. What a perfect place for a bit of inspiration. With one swift flick of the wrist, his engine and the torrential rain that poured on everything but the museum, came to a halt. He squinted from the rays reflecting off the gleaming pavement, glazed with puddle water left behind from the storm. Grabbing his sunglasses from the glove compartment, he closed the car door and swayed towards the museum's entrance.

It was stuffy, not like the apartment, but stuffy like old things. The sophisticated kind of stuffy, not ramen noodle breath and old socks, but ancient book pages and treasure dust - that stuffy. He walked amongst mothers who pulled their children in closely and artsy students who looked equally intrigued and perplexed by his presence. Jim wondered why they were so interested in him when world treasures sat around them. With no time to suffer fools, he ignored their stares and returned to his conversation with the mummies; other cultures were always such a rich well of inspiration. He finished his sentence and took another big mouthful of the baguette he found in the foyer on someone's left-behind tray, resting his head gently against the glass case. "Waste not, want not, Jim!" his mother's croaky voice cackled in his head. He was glad that his clothes were beginning to dry.

Jim had always been so intrigued by artefacts. He eyed them with wonder, drinking in every facet of their creation, picturing them coming to life in his mind at the will of another's skilled hands. Suddenly, he heard someone clear their throat from the corner of the room, breaking his fascinated trance. The block leaned menacingly against the door frame of the mummy room. It was drumming those stubby white fingers on the wood and watching him intensely. How long had it been there? He stood and brushed the crumbs from his lap, chewing his adopted sandwich with force and clenching the remains into a ball of mush in his left hand.

“Leave me alone!” He screamed, panicked. His words bounced off every surface, nearly waking the mummies from their gentle, eternal slumber. Which surely wouldn't be pleasant for anyone enjoying the museum on a peaceful Sunday morning. Then he ran. Legs turning into a flurry beneath him. His footsteps echoed off the corridor walls. Violently panting and digging his shoes into the impenetrable floor, he mentally berated his feeble body for not being faster, stronger, or more capable. Its lack of capability forced him to stop and catch his breath. Beneath his hand, he became aware of a chalky sensation, which somehow felt dense but brittle. Upon looking to investigate, he realised it was bone, dinosaur bone. It was magnificent, tall, tough, strong... and fast.

Before he could stop to think it through, he wrangled its neck and held on to it for dear life. White knuckles strangling it with the sleeves of his jacket, it was a good job old dinosaurs didn't need to breathe - any more, of course. They didn't have the lungs to do so even if they wanted to. It was a wonder it was still so fast under the circumstances, but the ride felt invigorating. Its bony feet clicked and clacked beneath him, hurtling toward the museum door. The block would never catch him now. He felt like an unstoppable warrior as the dinosaur crashed through the glass into the open world. He closed his eyes to savour the sweet sensation of feeling alive.

Upon stopping his steed outside the library, he tied the skeleton to the lamp post. He thought he'd better hold on to it just in case he needed to make another quick escape. His eyes flicked around the area, scanning for any sign of the pesky block, but he could see none. The world was still as the sun began its descent towards the horizon, and the orange glow of street lamps flickered against the remaining natural light like lighters in a festival crowd.

He panted and panicked, pushing through the giant oak doors of the library. Long halls and rows of books extended in front of him. There was no end in sight, and after running so far, he couldn't even see the door he initially emerged through. The halls appeared never-ending in every direction, and they all looked the same. Only the names on the book spines gave any indication that the corridors were different and not just quantum variations of identical halls. He picked a direction and ran some more, iron tainting his tongue. Until a tremendous spiral staircase, dripping in gold, made itself known to his vision. It was so far away at first that it had looked like a dot. As he got closer, his first thought was that maybe it was a mirage - but he hoped not; the last thing he needed was to go crazy.

Gold drops slipped from the bannisters and pooled on the wooden floorboards as he began his ascent. The iridescent liquid grasped both hands, threatening to absorb him into the bars and claim his body as part of the library. He thought of the statue heads that line the halls - perhaps they were mortal once, too. Holding this thought, he followed the tiny circles to try and find where the stairs led to.

As he started to be able to see where it ended, a doorway revealed itself at the top. Jim fell through the door, confused and disorientated, like a new baby emerging from its mother's womb. With the marvellous gold elixir dripping from both of his arms, he looked in awe at the view of the city. He couldn't help but reach his hands to his head and slick the gold like gel through his hair, overwhelmed by the distance around him. The city stretched for miles. It held him in its bustling nest as he stood in awe, his skin glinting in the sunlight.

An open book sat on the wall, its pages turned by the gentle breeze as though God was flicking through its contents. He picked it up, paused momentarily, and scanned the words with his fingertips. He admired the beautiful way black ink imprints on paper, etching entire worlds into minuscule flecks of interwoven wood pulp. Closing the book to protect the pages, he planted his toes at the edge of the sheer drop beneath him. Cradling the book like it was his baby and smiling like it was all that mattered in the world. Then he tossed it into the air and dived after it, arms to the wind, trusting the universe to take him where he needed to go.

The words came up out of the page and swirled around him, their letters and meanings detaching from the paper. As the fabric of reality warped to accept him, he dangled, suspended in bliss for what could have been seconds or millennia. A hole opened up in the distance, starkly contrasting and perfectly circular against the pastel blue sky. From the void, eight white cartoon fingers poked through. They strained the edge of the hole, forcing it to bend. Then the block tumbled into Jim’s existential bliss, ruining the experience flippantly. It dropped easily like it had done this daily in its silly little life. It was more aerodynamic, smaller, and faster than him. He wondered if he would ever escape, or was he fated to be tied to this tyrannical oddity forever? Its face, a picture of bliss, turned towards Jim. Resting its hands behind its head and crossing its legs, lounging in a hammock made of air.

Jim couldn't contain his rage; he swam towards the block, wading furiously through the air, and grabbed it with both hands, awakening it from its ill-obtained rest. The block looked shocked that Jim was fighting back for a second, but after brief consideration, it realised this was an opportunity to taunt him further.

Wrapping its arms and legs around Jim’s head, it fully stifled his creativity until there wasn't an original thought in his skull - and nearly suffocated him. His head was eerily silent; he usually would have relished the idea of a quiet mind, but this was too quiet. It deeply disturbed him. His stomach churned, and he thought he might vomit into the air that held him. Wrestling the block from his face, its concrete skin sanded his cheeks, and he accidentally inhaled some of the smaller letters swirling around them. This forced him to release the block and cough them into his palms. The letters J, K, E and O looked up at him, flecked with red-streaked sputum.

Landing with a thud, he noticed sand supporting his body and foamy brine lapping his toes. The sunset in the distance told him the rough time but not how many days had passed since he left his apartment. He stood up and brushed some of the letters off of him. He leaned his body to tap them out of his left ear and regain his full hearing. Looking around, he could see the block was face down in the sand, dazed a little but slowly raising itself on its arms. It spat the sand from its mouth and set its sights on Jim.

Plunging his hand into his pocket, Jim pulled out his pen and ripped off the lid furiously, like he was unsheathing a grand sword. Sweeping the nib across the space between himself and the block, a lasso of blue rope flew from the end of his pen, a dark laceration against the dreamy sky. He wrapped it around the block, and then again, and again, and again. Letting the ink flow freely into twine, he lassoed around the block once, twice, thrice. He pulled it as tight as he could, sweat beading from his brow in the heat.

Then, in a crazed frenzy, he started digging with the vigour of a rabid dog, looking for a carcass in the mud. His fingernails were cracking and bleeding onto the grains of sand falling through his palms. High on adrenaline and hunger, he dug nonstop for an hour straight. Sweat was now pouring from him, sticking the sand to his skin like lint on a new roller. Jim wrestled and wrangled the block into the ground where it belonged. In the ground where it belonged, it could never starve anyone trying to make a decent, honest living as a writer again. As the block’s grave began to look full, he calmed and patted damp sand on top like a proud child innocently finishing a sand castle.

Tired from a busy day, he lay his jacket on the sand and gazed at the sky awhile. Watching the clouds pass and finally feeling at ease and content. Ideas started to slow through him again as he pondered his crazy day. He pushed his hand into his pocket to check he still had his notebook, and on the first page, he scribbled a title: “An Epic Adventure: Jimmy Wordsmith vs. The Writer’s Block”. Then he stood and walked away, whistling to the train station. He waited for a train to pass so he could latch onto the back and ride the wind all the way home. Flapping like a flag from the end carriage, unbothered and blissfully sleepy.

His story is a testament to writers everywhere. It is an ode to the fact that sometimes gold can be dripping from your weary fingers whilst you scramble for new ideas. Hidden in plain sight, stowed away by blocks that exist only in the mind. It is a homage to the reality that brilliant ideas are found in the most peculiar and unexpected places. A dare to believe that as the universe dictates, with dedication and hope, creation will always prevail.

I hope you enjoyed this surreal story that entered my head during an extended period of writer's block. Inspiration truly can be found anywhere, even within writer's block itself. Follow me here for more, or keep in touch on Instagram - @rebekahcrawley224. I appreciate your support!