Writers’ Block

Today was the day I found my voice. I found it, grabbed and throttled it, tore out its voicebox and left it scattered over Word documents, Twitter feeds, Facebook statuses, half-full notepads that are so faded that I can hardly tell what colour their shop-bought status was. I tapped and thundered the keys of my laptop, my fingers racing over the keys at lightning speed, the backspace barely able to keep up with the spelling errors of my frenzied typing. Its ailing battery telling me “please, stop, you’re killing me”.

Statuses, Tweets, comments, even ‘likes’ – just anything to be seen and have my presence felt in cyber space. To make a difference and have a voice, even if it was just for a friend’s badly-lit, wonky profile picture of them as a bridesmaid, clutching a lilac bouquet as if it held all their hopes and dreams. Do I really like it?

Opening random pages of notepads, lingerie catalogues, free evening papers that had been abandoned in the depths of my work bag, scrawled with shopping lists, article ideas and upcoming friend’s birthdays. The sentences degrading into single words, joined by hyphens and arrows flowing neurotically around the text, as I attempt to link one thought to the next. Like a story. But there’s no story here, just a light that’s been snapped on after years of darkness, and we’re not shutting this party down yet.

As I run out of notes to jot, I think of stories to write. But nothing seems exciting enough, worthy enough to be at the end of a pen, flowing out on to a page in these moments (or was it hours?) or creative awakening. So instead, I write this. About how alive I feel; how connected I feel to my mind and to everything around me – from the keyboard at my fingertips to the hum of the central heating to the spot of purple nail varnish that has dried onto my chest of drawers. I think about all the thoughts that have buzzed around my head these past few years, contemplated in the shower, at the bus stop, gazing out the window at work or in the supermarket queue. That have never seen the light of day outside these brief moments that acted as a comma between the monotonous tasks of my day-to-day existence. They could have been something – a book, a script, even a blog post.

No matter. Here I am. And I don’t even care about spelling mistakes.

Words: Wendy Davies