The Main Character

Fresh document ready to type up one hell of a story!

Four hours go by and my cursor is still blinking back at me. No words before or after that thing. I need to write anything and I’ll at least have something to edit. Think, think, think.

‘The’ seems like a safe place to start. ‘The…’ what though is what will truly move the story along. ‘The alligator…’ The sentence doesn’t continue from there. I see it deleted on the screen in front of me, one letter at a time. Back to an empty page.

Stupid writer’s block!! Most of the sunlight has disappeared beneath the horizon and I still have nothing to show for it.

I need a character and a setting in which they exist. I cannot bear to open my internet browser again, I will definitely get distracted and still have an empty document. C’mon, Fredrick! Get your shit together, you’re the one who quit your job to pursue a career in writing.

I scream and throw the papers on the desk off in a whirl. Now I’m rambling to focus my mind on anything but this novel ahead of me.

Pacing my room seems like a better idea than sitting and staring off into space. Brainstorm time. What to write? An animal perhaps, or maybe an alien species infiltrating Mars? Let’s go with that!

‘The aliens descended upon us all.’ In the shadow of night s they lurk.’ Their skin is scaly and with blotches of orange in between the greyness of their appearance.’

Delete. Delete. Delete. Empty page again. I could try and branch out from my usual genre of science fiction and give poetry a go.

‘Roses are red, violets are blue. I’m a writer, with so much to do.’

I can’t use that either. The constant back and forth must surely be driving my keyboard insane.

Scratch that too! Romance. Man falls in love with a woman who has six kids. He is a work-a-holic who gets dragged away from the office for a work party where the woman works. He is reluctant to attend and pays no attention to his surroundings until she serves him at the bar. No, a bar is not his scene and it doesn’t make any sense. I’ll write a show for television instead.