Writer's block

She sat at the dining room table in front of her computer. A blank page and a simple black stick that appeared and then disappeared. A blank page like silence. A blank page like hundreds of unspoken words. Faced with this, her mind was full of ideas. A hundred thousand words flying through each of her thoughts, but none seemed worthy enough to appear on the screen. It would give concrete and tangible life to many concepts that still seemed so fragile.

Still, she needed to write something. Anything. Even just a few sentences. She had felt a surge of inspiration that she hadn't had for so long and not exploiting it seemed like a crime.

Time was stretching, the fire in the fireplace was crackling and the rest was only silence.

She felt in her entire soul the need, the inexplicable and indescribable need, to write. She wanted, through a set of words and sentences, to create a story.

She sometimes imagined herself writing such a fantastic story that it would be read and translated everywhere in the world. And always, in every corner of her mind, the inexorable fear of taking a path already traveled. The pride and the bogeyman of every author.

Does the will to be read spoil the ability to write what you really want to write?

That is why she had started writing on a computer. Typing on the computer no longer gave her enough time to question herself. A bubble of silence always seemed to surround her as she typed, perhaps a little aggressively, on the keys of her keyboard. The barrier between her mind and the page seemed so much more surmountable when the words were appearing on a screen, and not on a sheet of paper. Admittedly, the pen and the piece of paper carried within them an undeniable charm. However, the speed of transcribing thoughts to the computer was unbeatable.

Yet that day, despite the surge of inspiration and the will to write, she couldn't do anything. So, she got up, put on her coat, woolen hat and shoes, then left the house.

She spent the day wandering the streets. Seeking inspiration that was already drowning her mind. But no sentence formed and the urge to write persisted. She walked with a rhythmic pace, without avoiding the puddles. She hadn't taken an umbrella, and her woolen hat was soon soaked through.

How could she be so inspired and yet not be able to write a single line? It was with this simple question that the idea appeared. An absurd idea, and yet surely already used millions of times. But it was still a great idea, and already the words wanted to come out and the sentences were forming.

She sat on a bench, under a tree, nowise sheltered from the rain. She pulled out her phone and opened "notes." And amid the downpours falling from the sky, on a wet and blurry phone screen, soaked herself, she wrote the story of the writer’s block.

Writer’s block. It was perhaps very simple and paradoxical to write on this subject. Simple and paradoxical perhaps, but the feeling of satisfaction was incomparable.

She told a story, her story and that of so many people. She wrote that she couldn't write.

So, it was on a rainy afternoon, when she was afraid that she would never know how to write again, that she was inspired by her disarray to write a short story. This little story will probably never be translated. This little story will probably never be read very much.

But this story was written. And when it was over, the girl went home with a light heart, and again she sat down at her computer, and the words came. The sentences seemed to dance before her eyes as her fingers flew above the keyboard.

She told herself that when she couldn't write, the only thing to do was write.

She finally wrote her last sentence and a full stop:

She finally wrote her last sentence and a full stop.