No rest for the weary. There’s no small break in the middle of the game where you can catch your breath and play like you mean it. As we enter the latter part of the semester, our brains have congealed into a useless mass, which, when trying to retrieve information or even basic coherent thought, fail us on a regular basis. This is the chief cause of a condition known to many writers (and students, as we all must be writers at some point in our college career) as writer’s block. There are many methods for turning an empty page into a work of art, but that involves doing work, and no one wants that.
I think about this for a long time, as I sit in front of the computer screen, feeling my patience and resolve wearing thin. Sure, I could write about penguins and robots, filling the white space with nonsense words and a story that no one wants to read, but that doesn’t fly with Generation editors.
I light a cigarette so that I might have a moment’s distraction from the block. The scent of tobacco and death swims around the desk and puts a haze across the screen. It provides a bit of protection from the bright page bearing only one sentence: “The fictional facts are so factually fictional that we are all discombobulated.” Isn’t that the truth?
I stare at my bed for a while, thinking about its warm embrace. Seven o’clock isn’t too early for bed, is it? No it can’t be; farmers go to bed early, and they have real important jobs. I look out the window and onto the street below. Snow is starting to whip past the streetlights. My cell phone is ringing. Without looking at the caller ID (doesn’t matter who it is, all I see is a much needed distraction), I answer the phone.
“Y’ello?”
“Hey, what’s goin’ on?” Oh shit, it’s Jake, my roommate and editor. Maybe I should have checked the caller ID. He’s probably going to be looking for something written.
“Nothing, sitting around smoking a cigarette, thinking about having something to eat.” God! I’m a horrible liar.
“Alright, well did you e-mail your piece to me?”
“Oh no, I forgot to e-mail it. When do you need it by, because I was thinking of heading out for food. I got my shoes and jacket on already.”
“Well I’m heading to class now; I’ll be home by ten, that’s when I’m going to start editing.”
“No worries man, I’ll have it in your box by then.”
“Alright, cool. Oh, would you mind picking up some beer? I have money. I’ll get you back when I get home.”
“No problem man, I’ll catch you around ten.”
I hang up the phone and look at the one sentence on my screen. I could always get stoned and write something out. That tends to work. Maybe get the creative juices flowing with a bit of chemical boost? If baseball players can use steroids to beef up their batting, then a writer must be able to use mind-altering drugs to put some words on the page.
I spend the next five minutes rolling up a joint. Smoking is no fun alone though, so I give a yell out to my housemate Beth.
“Yo, you wanna get lifted?”
“No, I have to study for a test tomorrow, and I thought you had to write something?”
“I need your help! I’m begging you, come get high with me. C’mon, I already rolled a big joint and I don’t want to smoke alone. I need to grease the wheels of creativity.”
“Fine,” she says with a slight hint of guilt. I don’t really care if she has to study. Her test is tomorrow; my story is due right now.
She rolls her chair into my room and I spark the joint. After a few hits, the thought of food springs into my mind.
“You wanna order pizza?” I ask with an uncontrollable smile on my face.
“Definitely.”
I run downstairs to grab some menus from the kitchen. We look over them and finally settle on something and I phone in the order.
“You know what would be really great?” I ask after hanging up the phone. “If we watched some Lord of the Rings right now.”
“We can do that.”
My story now forgotten, we head downstairs and start to watch the movie. Immediately I am entranced by the world of the hobbits and my gaze doesn’t leave the television screen for another two hours.
“Hey, weren’t you supposed to be writing a story?” asks Beth, breaking my concentration.
“Weren’t you supposed to be studying for a test?” I retort.
“Touché…” and our conversation ends there.
As ten o’clock rolls around, we haven’t moved from our spots on the couch, and Jake’s car pulls into the driveway. All of a sudden I remember my purpose for getting high. It was a writing tool. Sparking the joint was meant to spark my imagination. I search for any reason why I may not have written a story. I can hear Jake opening the side door and walking up the stairs to his bedroom. I have five more minutes to come up with an excuse before he comes into the living room wondering where the story is. As I sit thinking of what to say, he walks in.
“Hey, I didn’t get that story.”
He stops, and stares at me for a moment. “You’re stoned aren’t you?”
“Well Jake, first off, yes, I am stoned.” Beth giggles at this. “And well, all I can say about the story is, well…” I trailed off trying to reach for that excuse.
“The truth is you didn’t write it.”
“Well that’s one way to say it, or we could just say that the fictional facts are so factually fictional that we are all discombobulated.”
Jake stares at me blankly, possibly wondering how many times we have done this before.
“God damn it, Matt,” he says. “Did you at least get the beer?”
At some point I must come to terms with the fact that I haven’t done any work, but as I have learned, everything works out in the end. So as you stare at your computer screen, wondering why the words aren’t coming out and your muse has forsaken you, feel free to use my methods. Roll a joint, pop in The Lord of the Rings, and start thinking of excuses for why it isn’t done.
