Alice Buell Lawrence

Your girl here doesn’t normally have this issue. I am utterly at a loss for what to write. Not with this post, but with the piece I’m supposed to be working on.

I have a theme for the competition, but I have no ideas whatsoever. I wrote a draft of a story this morning and it was fairly terrible. A colleague of mine asked to read it (I tend to get in the office early and write before I start the day), and I let them have a look. I normally don’t do that with something entirely unedited, but I don’t think this will ever see the light of day, so why not.

It was about someone who is haunted by previous partners while always looking to start over again. There’s some of me in the character, of course, though the rest of it is entirely hypothetical. The narrator is with a man, for one thing, and I’m a lesbian.

It’s a middle-of-the-night piece, something I’ve been writing about quite a bit lately. I’ve struggled with insomnia most of my life, and I feel like night is when your brain can slow down and be the most profound.

Regardless, with the tight word count for the competition (500 words), I rolled in at 486. Got it out of my system. And after a full read, my colleague thought I was writing about an assassin, so this clearly was not a well-written piece.

And now I’m staring at a blank screen again. I’m stuck. I don’t like it.