Writerly Desperation

I realise I'm out of practice but I think, "What the hell?" But as I sit, the conviction sinks in that it's not something I can do easily at all. The words just won't come.

I feel the rising panic. Its tendrils tickle as it ekes its way through me, electric impulse led. I want my brain to kickstart but it's dead of ideas. Tumbleweed rolls past on the barren plains of my imagination, a dust devil swirling, pirouetting its vacuous grains off into the distance. Dystopian! Scorched Earth! I could write something bleak as my mind's images suggest but who wants to read that shit right now? I don't.

I think about my day. I fed the birds. I could write a children's story about little Tom Tit and Reggie Robin but nah. I'm not in the mood for that. Too twee. Maybe it could be an Aardman style thriller à la Watership Down but with birds, where gangs of jackdaws and magpies try to control the food supply with squirrels for generals but the little birds fight back and win the day with an air display of such magnitude that the Dam Busters would be proud! Or maybe not.

I went to the dentist. Killer dentist, intent on using the teeth of his victims to make new false teeth for other patients in a story entitled Enamel Animal. Maybe but with 366 words, could I build sympathy for the psychotic toothpuller? I think not.

At least I know I'm not suffering from writer's (writers'?) block. I do have a severe case of writer's desperation (singular - just for me). So maybe I should write about that and make it as bizarre and individual as possible and leave it to the reader to decide whether it's the wild ramblings of a writer becoming unhinged who can no longer write to form with any sort of consistency.

Or whether this is the conceit of a writer very much aware of their ability to write puerile nonsense to a word count and just needing to produce something a little different for a day before the end of a microfiction challenge finally arrives.

Reader, you decide.

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364 words