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Forced Writing
Once upon a time there was a girl. And she was forced to write a story.
Well no one was forcing her as such. But she felt she had an obligation.
No one forces parents to love their kids.
But they kind of have to.
It’s a bit like that.
She wanted to be a writer, so she had to force herself to write.
That was that.
* *
*
"Clair, what are you doing in there?"
"Writing."
"Oh."
Sometimes people took an interest in her writing, and other times they didn’t.
* * *
Clair had been sick recently. So she hadn’t felt like writing. Then she got better. And was too busy to write. The piece of paper attached to the top left corner of her computer screen
"Write 1000 words a day" occasionally brought on feelings of intense guilt, but most of the time she tried to ignore it. Tried.
Bits of paper are powerful things.
Very powerful things.
This piece of paper was torturing Clair.
It didn’t help that it was bright yellow.
There was no pretending that it didn’t exist.
* * *
Writers come in many varieties. There are science fiction writers. Fantasy writers. Writers that hate science fiction and fantasy and don’t even really know the difference between them, and prefer writing about
"real stuff". There are poets. And there are "writers who are currently not
writing". Clair fit into this last category. She had belonged there for a few months now.
Being a writer and not writing is kind of like being a housewife but not having a house.
Clair had previously been a weird, antisocial writer. But now that she wasn’t writing, she was just weird and antisocial. That bothered her a lot.
* * *
There were no excuses now for shutting herself in her room for hours on end. For eavesdropping on people’s conversations. For staring at people for exceptionally long periods of time. For dressing strangely. For not doing housework.
So many disadvantages to being a writer who is currently not writing.
Not to mention that it is extremely hard to get published that way.
* * *
Clair was going to win a Pulitzer prize. She’d decided on that. She just hadn’t yet go around to writing that
Pulitzer prize winning novel. When she felt bad about this, she thought about all the famous writers who had only begun writing at forty or fifty years old. Plenty more time to procrastinate.
* * *
Clair’s friends didn’t seem to understand her problem. Her complaints that she hadn’t written anything for a long time were usually followed by the extremely unuseful, impractical, illogical,
"just write something then".
It is extremely extremely hard to "just write something".
No. Actually. It is not hard to just write something.
It is hard to write something good.
And the problem is, for a lot of writers, the thought of writing something bad is even more terrifying than the thought of not writing at all.
Unless of course you write something that is bad, but people like reading it, and it sells millions of copies, and you make a fortune anyway.
That happens.
* * *
If you say you want to be a doctor, but then you get to the last year of high school and start failing physics and chem., it would be perfectly acceptable to say that you don’t want to be a doctor anymore. Or if you want to be an Olympic runner, but then you have a terrible car accident and become permanently paralysed from the waist down, people wouldn’t exactly look down on you for following a different career path. You’d get a lot of sympathy and pity from people around you if you wanted to be an opera singer and then suddenly, tragically, got some disease of the vocal cords and couldn’t sing anymore.
But if you say you want to be a writer, and then you just stop writing, it’s just your own bloody fault.
What was Clair going to tell her grandchildren?
* * *
"I was going to be a writer."
"Oh no, what happened Grandma?" they would say. "Did you lose motor control of your fingers? Did you have a rare disease of the frontal lobes that destroys the synapses and neurotransmitters responsible for imaginative
thinking?"
"No." She would have to say.
"I just didn’t write any more."
And then they’d look at her as if she was a bit stupid.
* * *
If Clair wasn’t going to be a writer she would have to "do something
else". These words wore black capes, carried daggers and swords and made scary, threatening growling noises.
They usually came to her in one of two situations.
The first was the usual lying alone at night situation, when all bad things that carry daggers and swords and make scary threatening growling noises usually arrive.
Do something else. Do something else. Do something else. Do something else.
The chant would continue.
Clair would press her head against her pillow and try to think of anything to get it out of her mind, even if that meant humming the tune to that annoying retrovision add.
"The only decision … retrovision!"
But then, that reminded her that someone else had managed to write a catchy line that rhymed, which was more than she could do. Oh, the pain!
The other situation when the words "do something else" came to her was when she saw other people who were managing to successfully live comfortable, productive and fulfilling, secure lives by having done
"something else".
Something else generally implied a university course leading to a well paid job.
* * *
Did Clair want to keep torturing herself trying to produce a great literary work, going through the agony of this periodic writers block, worrying her whole life about never making a cent, or should she just be sensible and logical and scrap the whole childish, sentimental, unrealistic
"go for your dreams" idea and do something else?
Like a double degree in law/commerce?
* * *
"Clair, what are you doing in there?"
"I’m still writing Mum."
"Can I see what you’ve written?"
Clair stared down at her blank page.
"Haven't done anything yet."
"Then you’re not writing, are you?"
"Just because I haven’t written anything yet doesn’t mean I’m not
writing."
Just because she wasn’t writing didn’t mean she wasn’t a writer, did it?
* * *
So anyway, once upon a time there was a teenage girl. And instead of getting upset over her boyfriend dumping her, or being fat, or a bad hair day, she was getting upset about not being able to write anymore.
(Roll eyes, give each other weird looks, make mental note not to ask this person to any upcoming parties/social gatherings).
Sometimes she would get so frustrated about it she would cry. And feel very, very sorry for herself.
Writers are extremely good at feeling sorry for themselves. Lots of people are, but writers have perfected it.
* * *
Clair had spent twenty-five minutes ruling a margin.
It was the most careful, neat margin she had ever drawn.
And served absolutely no purpose.
To keep invisible, non existent edges of lines of words straight.
Unproductive and unfulfilled like her.
Scrunch up piece of paper.
Throw to bin.
Miss of course because writers cannot throw.
Writers don’t have time to acquire skills like that.
Because they are too busy writing. Or being upset about not being able to write.
The ratio of these two preoccupations varies from writer to writer. And over different periods in their lives.
Pick up scrunched up paper. Throw again. Miss again.
It’s okay Clair, writers don’t have to be able to throw. They don’t have to be able to
"do something else". They just have to write …
* * *
Once upon a time there was a girl. And she was forced to write a story.
Well no one was forcing her as such. But she felt she had an obligation.
No one forces parents to love their kids.
But they kind of have to.
It’s a bit like that.
She wanted to be a writer, so she forced herself to write.
That was that.
She wrote a story eventually. And lived happily ever after.
Well, she wrote a story anyway.
And then got writers block again for another few months.
And then wrote a poem.
And another story.
Then got writers block again.
And then wrote again.
Sometimes she actually enjoyed the writing bit.
Sometimes she’d think what she wrote was good.
And sometimes she wouldn’t.
But she was determined that it would not be the last.
Along with feeling sorry for themselves, writers are good at being stubborn.
Clair wasn’t going to take the easy way out, give up and resort to "doing something
else" that easily.
Because the truth was, "doing something else" could never make her happy.
And it’s an unspoken rule.
Writers just don’t go and do something else.
They write something else.
Clair picked up her pen and ruled another margin …
Write
Zarris
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Reviews
(applause received) 
Della
Australia
"Did you read my heart Jessica!?? I haven't written anything (except pages of mourning blubber in my journal) since my husband began mid-life crisis last year. But now - I am, I have decided! Thanks for giving us your heart, so that you could jump-start the rest of us! Brilliant!"
Kathyleen
Philippines
"What a great story about writers and writing! You are defintely a talent to watch out for."
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