Today’s one of those days where it’s incredibly difficult to write. No big story ideas were rattling around my brain when I woke this morning, and the situation didn’t improve as noon approached. Maybe it’s all of the interesting locations I’ve seen in my 30 hours playing Just Cause 2. but the prospect of writing from home seemed so… uninteresting. I thought a change of scenery might do me good, so I put the top down and drove to Pacifica -- a small beach town about 10 minutes from my house.
I’m now on the open deck of the Pacifica Café with a BLT in hand, and my laptop out in front of me. I still have an hour to post a story, and the café has Wi-Fi, so things are looking promising. But still I have nothing to write about.
I was just about ready to type…something, when the café owner and a few locals started to talk about the person that drowned down at the pier this weekend. They seemed to think the person was a bit crazy for swimming in the choppy waters near the pier. Crazy or not, the guy’s dead, so it wasn’t a great decision. His “friends” also left him to drown after they couldn't find him, so that probably didn’t help much.
OK, it’s time to write.
But it’s 70 degrees and sunny, I can hear the ocean from the deck, and there’s reggae music playing quietly in the background. I just need to tune this all out and pretend as though Shoe and Demian are behind me, threatening to beat me if I don’t come up with a catchy article by noon.
Perhaps I could write about the Nintendo 3DS. After all, the latest iteration of the DS has yet to launch in the US, and they’ve essentially just made it out-of-date by announcing its successor. That’s crazy! You know what else is crazy? The old dude who just sat down with a coffee and decided that now is the perfect time to trim his fingernails. Even his dog thinks this is odd because he’d rather lay under my table than be seen with crazy nail-trimming guy.
Now “crazy old guy” has just spit off the side of the deck for the second time. It’s as though he felt that trimming his nails at an eatery wasn’t quite disgusting enough, so he had to make sure I knew he was nasty. I look forward to the day where I’m old and just do whatever the hell I want. Kids be damned, I handle my personal hygiene business at the Pacifica Café!
It’s 1:30 and my story is due in 30 minutes. It’s time to face the music; the cabin fever/writer’s block combo has won out. I usually pull out a last-minute victory against those hated rivals, but today they’ve combined forces to crush me. I think I’m going to go for a nice stroll down the beach to think about tomorrow’s article.
But I’ll be back. I always come back.
How do you handle a severe case of writer’s block? What’s the most interesting or bizarre place you’ve found inspiration to write? I’m sure there are some great stories out there, so please feel free to share them in the comments below.
