Ethan Writing

I had started on this a few years ago, it was supposed to be a cabin in the woods / paranormal horror story. I think it's rather amusing how writing about writer having writers block, gave ME writers block. Hope you enjoy.

The morning brought in fog. A thin layer stretched out over the lake - enough to cover it completely. One would not be able to tell there was a body of water unless they walked down the hill. Even then the image would not hold so much promise. Gray, cold - void. But the kind of void that left one calm. The sky above the water was almost a carbon copy, a bit less gray above the treeline. A peaceful scene. A setting one would expect to find in some indie film - or a novel. It was something to write about.

Ethan was focusing on the void, waiting for some sort of inspiration to spark. The firework that would make him jump from his chair and jump behind the computer. There was nothing, as usual; normalcy in the past couple of months. But he always blamed his writer's block on external things. Moving being the most obvious at the time.

The table by the window had become engraved in his mind, there was always a bustle in the streets below the window. For years it had been a sanctuary in the tiny apartment (they always seemed fit for writers). Eventually his gaze had shifted from a computer screen to the streets below.

Every author faced writer's block.

Even Stephen King had to sit up in Maine staring out of windows. Only, probably not as long as Ethan had. So much that he had memorized every pattern in the sidewalk; the stitch of every overcoat draped around the lonely businessmen. By the time Ethan left there was no emotional attachment. Just the image. Images would stick, but never stories.

Currently the office upstairs of his new home had remained practically untouched. Bookshelves were empty and boxes scattered. Laptop shut on a desk that still had the price sticker. The man had trouble admitting he was afraid to sit behind it.

A week had passed since he first shoved everything in. Eventually someone was going to call him out on it - luckily for him publishers didn’t usually make house calls. But pretentious teenagers and their doubting stepmothers usually did. Both however, had the right idea that great art takes time - if the artist is left alone.

If he hadn’t quit smoking he would have gone through a pack in the hour he had been sitting outside. It had been poetic in college, but after years it just seemed pathetic. Instead he gripped a pen tightly between his fingers, pressing it to the notepad in his lap and waiting.

There were no words on this particular page; crumpled up pages beneath the chair he was slumped in. Though the only thing remotely interesting on those were scribbled out descriptions of the scene before him.

Now he just decided to wait, coffee getting cold next to him.

Fuck it.

He wrote as the thought came to him, scribbling the words out before he could look at them twice.

“I’ll sit here all day if I have too.” He told the notepad, as if it was listening and refusing to grant him the power of words.

_

There’s a certain backdrop that must be set when thinking about the town. One of solitude - the kind made for ghosts. Dusty roads and opened mailboxes. Shutters endlessly banging in the wind. Cars that have collided with trees and fences - the look of escape. Yet it’s empty, it’s all empty…

“This fucking sucks.” He breathed, pointer finger itching over the giant ‘DELETE’ key. Over the course of the day he had moved throughout the house. No small area was left alone, he had planted himself everywhere; The Eagles blasting from the stereo in the living room (an hour wasted setting up for a good reason). Hotel California probably played about a dozen times - each guitar rift closing in on him like the walls in which he was confined. His back had pressed up against almost all of them.

A professor in college had once stated that changing scenery was a good way to cure writer's block. The same professor had also stated that sometimes sitting and letting whatever comes to mind flow also helped.

That was why Ethan’s journey around the house eventually landed him in the office he had practically done nothing with - behind the desk that faced giant windows giving him the same view as his spot outside this morning.

It may have helped to just type away - but it wasn’t coming out as perfect or fitting as he would have hoped.

Stories were funky, but not all of them could just fall out into a word-press. Especially when it came to Ethan - everything had to be planned out at a certain point. Details needed to be thought of long before half of it was done. A director never thought of how to end a movie halfway through the last scene. No, there had to be some sort of plot in there somewhere.

Shit, anywhere.

I’ll just give it all up. He thought, staring intently at the few sentences it had taken him an hour to process correctly. Go back to teaching to pay the mortgage.

He found himself looking up out of the window - it wasn’t foggy outside anymore.

The leaves were starting to change color, a few specks of orange and yellow in between the endless green. If the man didn’t come up with anything by the first snowfall he feared he would have to end his career all together. Become a mountain man, fuck teaching kids who could care less.

He leaned back in the chair, placing his hands behind his head. It was a pleasant though, not having to deal with anybody. One with the forest. Chopping firewood and growing tomatoes. Hanging out with wolves and wrestling bears to the ground. He could picture the headlines about the ever so famous author disappearing to become a mountain man. Maybe getting his own show on the Discovery Channel.

“Fathership.”

His daydream was just getting to the good part - Ethan was standing on a cliff looking over snow cover treetops that went on forever. He flinched at the interruption, spinning around in the chair quickly to see Lynn standing in the doorway, head tilted to the side. She had perfected the look of ‘what the hell are you doing?’ in recent years. Her blue eyes always stared into somebody as if constantly stating ‘what the actual fuck.’

Ethan coughed. “Uh, what?” If there was one thing he hated, it was being interrupted. Especially when he didn’t have any work to show for why he shouldn’t have been bothered. Slowly rolled himself in front of the computer to cover up for his lack of anything.

“Can I borrow your camera?” Lynn was in the room now, pulling open the first box she saw and kicking it aside upon discovering it was just books. “I’m gonna take a walk in the woods.”

The teen made her way to the next box, this time kneeling down on the floor as she attacked the tape with her fingers.

She would want to walk around in the woods, wouldn’t she? Ethan imagined it wasn’t that much different than when he was a kid wandering the streets of Queens with the asshole kids he stuck around with.

“Good luck finding it.” Ethan muttered; the thought of her wandering in the woods wasn’t the first of his worries. While she wasn’t looking he turned himself around and closed the laptop as quickly as a kid hiding porn from his mother would.

“How was school?” Now it was his turn to start looking for the camera - Lynn just kept opening boxes clearly marked ‘books.’

Remaining in the chair he rolled to the closest box, one that had already been opened when he retrieved his laptop. From within he pulled forth the black back that held his rarely used camera. That’s when he noticed his daughter had avoided his question - still going through boxes that obviously didn’t have the object she desired.

“Lynnie. It’s right here.” That got her attention, and before Ethan could think about withholding it until he got more information, it was snatched from his grasp. Lynn practically jumped across the room and out of it.

Ethan leapt from the chair finally to go after her, grasping the door frame and hanging onto it as he swung out into the hallway that Lynn was already halfway down.

“Amber Lynn, you’re allowed to hate high school.” his ‘I’m your parent’ voice started to come out, which must have got her attention because she turned at the top of the stairs. “You don’t have to act so pretentious about it.”

“Okay.” She huffed, lowering her eyes as she forced the camera out of the bag and letting it fall to the floor. “Me and Alice made a bet you wouldn’t finish a paragraph in our first year before deciding to go somewhere else.” She pulled the camera strap over her head and finally turned to make her descent down the stairs.