Writers Block or Something Like It

This is the thing about writers block: it sucks! Although I’m not even sure if I necessary have writers block but perhaps its tortured cousin to it. Perhaps one would call it writers-back up.

It’s not that I don’t have ideas to write about, cause I do. I have several ideas for novels and just as many seeds of short stories tumbling inside my head. What happens is I will write about 200 some words of it and then… poop. Nothing. I’ve lost the spark. I can’t make plot point A connect to plot point B. It’s sad really cause I would love to see this stories and narratives complete themselves. 

I’ve gone back in my hard-drive to a folder entitled STORIES, which is where many a story goes rest for a while. I call it the cryogenic portion of its life. They are there, exactly how I left them. Here is a girl walks to the edge of a forest in search of a pumpkin. A man gives shelter to a sea-faring traveler and is attempting to dock the boat named Selkie. His arms have been pulling on that rope for over a year now. In another, a whale has invited a man to touch her slick skin under the light of a full moon. In another story a woman has been attempting to change her villages’ bigoted attitudes towards the family of satyrs who are her neighbors for quite some time now. 

And these are just the stories I started last year. Never mind the tales I’ve spun over this summer. The crow people and the woman with her cherries may never have the rest of their stories told. The boy who began to study under the wise-woman might never become a fully actualized individual. Who is the Queen of Crustaceans and will she ever reconcile with her sister the Duchess of Cephalopods? Two churches stand in the middle of an post-apocalyptic town and the people are learning to live in harmony with nature again. This is a solute to the Fifth Sacred Thing by Starhawk.

How many other pages will be born and laid to rest in this corner of my hard-drive till I liberate them from their slumber? When will I release them from the task I’ve left them with and find resolution? 

Perhaps, I just need an inspiration and a muse.

The Queen of Crustaceans

She was the Queen of Crustaceans and her sister was the Duchess of Cephalopods. The Queen of Crustaceans kingdom lay in the ecotone on the western most edge of France. At high tide, only the spires from the palace and the temples of the Crab God and Lobster Goddess speared through the tide. Those who would peer over the cliffs at this time would think nothing of these jagged and rocky minarets. But when the tide recedes the sandy city is exposed in all its aquatic glory. The cities quartered sections appear as tide pools with the Queen of Crustaceans palace in the center. Giant fans of sea weed and kelp cling to door frames and hang from window frames. They dry in the midday sun and become delicate and crisp nutrients to her majesty. Her armored children crawl over every surface, risking their life at the hand of the black-tipped seagulls, and harvest the kelp for their queen.

Look, she can be seen at her dais. Great coral bowls of dried vegetation lay at her feet. See her rust, ochre, and rouge dress hang from her great shoulders. Thin and segmented crab or lobster legs make up her bodice and crab shells cover her small breasts. Her pale blue skin can be seen in the sunlight, he turns her face skyward and it flushed a deeper blue, shades of the ocean. Many believe her to be made of cast off shells and sea spray. But those who know her well have come to find that her clothes are made of the naturally deceased and the blue tint is formed by copper infused blood. She told me this and I quote.

“Unlike the mammalian blood which runs red with an iron molecule sounded by protein, at the center of my bloods core lies a beautiful copper nucleolus. My children and I share this.”

She has served me plates of her kelp and sea grass, sweet, salty and crisp. I have given her bottles of ruby red wine but never a white for this would seam to cruel.