writer’S Block

An excerpt from "The Last Storyteller & Other Back Porch Ramblings. This is from the story "writer'S Block" Hope you enjoy.

By midnight I had written fifty pages, nearly nineteen thousand words. I broke my own rule and read and then reread what I had written until the clock chimed 2 AM. It was good. It was very good. The story flowed like a summer stream. Enough humor to make me laugh, peppered with a pinch of sadness that made me cry. An unpredictable twist and another shamelessly rudimentary. The fictional Rhonda was so much like the sleeping Rhonda that I cringed when I read fictional Rhonda’s harsh dialogue. I was writing about my bride. On a subconscious level, I knew this from the first key stroke. Hell, it wasn’t even a subconscious behavior. It was with purpose. Rhonda, the real Rhonda, is a near perfect character for any form of prose. Not the Before-Rhonda. That one may have made a good line or two in a sweetheart poem—there wasn’t quite enough there for a full-fledged romance novel. But the After-Rhonda, the chip-eating, soda-drinking, scale-tipping, nasty-mouth, finger-licking-Rhonda would make a delightful antagonist in any story.

I walked over to the muted television and turned it off. She was sleeping on the sofa in a most uncomfortable position. Her lavender robe had fallen open, I could see little chocolate crumbs peppering her white bra. I wondered how it was that everything but her boobs had gotten fat. I knew I should wake her, a night on the sofa would attack the healthiest of backs; hers stood no chance. An empty bag of chips lay on the floor beside her. I stared at the discarded bag for too long.

I picked up the empty bag before walking to the kitchen. The rubbish container was overflowing, so the counter worked as a rest stop for the poor bag on its way to the great garbage dump in the sky. After microwaving a cup of instant coffee, (by far the greatest deficiency of civilized man) I returned to my desk and picked up the stack of papers. I tapped them, squared them, and finally placed them neatly on the desk. The Whimsical Demise of the Relentlessly Rotund Rhonda Pennebrigg.

So far, the story was good, but with at least one major flaw. What exactly was a whimsical demise? My question is not meant to explore the meaning of the phrase, that is quite clear. A better question I suppose, would be what is the means of this whimsical demise? How would someone meet their ruin, their death, in a freakish manner? I have no experience in this arena. In fact, I don’t know anyone, other than grandparents, that have died. How could that be? Everyone knows someone who died, don’t they? And to complicate things even more the main character has the same name as my bride. I can’t write her death. Whimsical or otherwise.

I could change the tittle and the relentless antagonist’s name. But it would still be about her. In the end, I would be the only one that knew her secret.

I can’t do that.

This is the book. Every writer has one. A story born from the soul. The book may not appear in the New York Times best seller list. It probably won’t be turned into a movie or mini-series. It is unlikely to win the Neustadt International Prize for Literature or The American Book Award. In fact, it may have more pages than the number of people who will ever read it. Be that as it may, this is the book. The pages and words are already a part of me. I have no need to read it again. I know every word, every paragraph, every comma, semi-colon and exclamation point. I know the latter is used sparingly and the former with great care. I also know that the book is about her, Rhonda Pennebrigg, my bride.

Now, I must determine how to kill her.