Facing the Blank Page
by Jeff Baker
Oh Hell! It’s August!
I spent most of last month writing “June” on my checks and now it’s August and I have a column due.
What to write? What to write? What to write?
Damn. Blank page. Damn!
Review a book I’m reading? I haven’t read a book lately.
Write about what I’ve been doing? Let’s see; sitting around, typing, watching TV, going to the store, drinking beer.
Nope. Not enough word count.
What time is it now? Damn! Later than when I started. Closer to the thirteenth.
I could write about deadlines. Hmmmm. I have three or four deadlines right now…
Let’s see…there’s the weekly flash fiction, (HOW long have I been doing that?!?) There’s that monthly draw thing…I need to write up a romance story for, oh I did that. And I have to edit an old story down by the end of the month.
And this column is due by the thirteenth.
Idea…idea…idea…damn!
What was it Charles Schulz said? Something like doing a daily comic strip is “not unlike having an English theme hanging over your head for the rest of your life.”
Okay…there’s an idea…comic strips. There are Gay ones. Do you read any of them?
Damn.
Blank page. Big blank page.
Okay, Mike. You’re a writer. You’ve done this before. What about a stream-of-consciousness thing? You know, how the writer handles that blank page. Okay, blank screen today.
Boring.
Damn!
What time is it? Later than it was.
I wonder how Herb Caen handled this?
—end—
Jeff Baker (Whose friends DO call him “Mike” sometimes!) blogs about reading and writing sci-fi, fantasy and horror on or around the Thirteenth of every month. He has a story coming out in the new QSF anthology “Rise” and regularly posts fiction on the RoMMantic Reads e-zine https://rommanticreads.wordpress.com/ and on his blog https://authorjeffbaker.com/ He lives in a house full of books which were probably written on deadline and wastes time on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063555483587