Writer's Block

Saw a discussion about writer's block on a page and someone made an interesting point. They said something to the tune of "there's no such thing as writer's block; you're just expecting whatever you write to be perfect". And I started thinking.

First off, I don't agree that writer's block isn't a thing, or is just an excuse to not write. Well, for some it can be an excuse to not write, but I digress. I had a case of writer’s block for about 20 years, from roughly 1991/92 til 2012. It wasn’t because I didn’t want to write; believe me, I wanted to.

It was because I didn’t have anything to write about. Hell, in ’91, I was six. What the hell does a six year old have to write about? So yeah, I was blocked until twenty years of reading and life experience coalesced into a story. Then another. And another ad nauseum.

Wow, I told that story and got no closer to my point. Writer’s block can take the form of worry; worrying that you’re not a good enough writer to get through that book or story. Or that you can barely write your name, let alone fiction and that you shouldn’t put anything more complicated on paper than “Milk, eggs, bread, pick up dry cleaning”. I think every writer has these thoughts; any one of my friends can attest to the fact that I’ve had them.

But here’s the thing: you have to let go of these worries and just get the words on the page. It’s ok to write complete garbage. Garbage can be edited and sometimes, it even sells as is. There’s no accounting for taste, after all.

But why do writers seem to think that we have to write perfectly right off the bat? No practitioner of any other art form thinks this way. No painter thinks he’ll be able to replicate Rembrandt the first time he picks up a brush. No musician thinks that he’ll be playing flawlessly as soon as he picks up the instrument. Why are writers so dead set on perfection the first time out of the gate?

I think it’s because writing is such an important part of our society, of how it functions, that we think it should be easy. We learn how to write at such an early age, learning first the shapes of letters, then of words, then grammar, relentlessly marching toward literacy. So, because we learn so early, we think “hey, writing’s not that hard. Why, I think I could write a book without much trouble.” And we’re wrong. It’s a difficult thing, telling stories about people who never existed (sometimes) and putting them on paper.

Don’t get me wrong, there are people for whom these things are easy. But I think for most of us, it truly is a Herculean task, especially if you plan to try and make money from your writing, like most writers do.

 So, yes, give yourself permission to write shitty scenes, wooden dialogue, asinine plots. Some things can be fixed with editing, some can’t. Consider the shitty things you’re writing as practice and remember what your first grade, hell, maybe kindergarten, teacher said: Practice makes perfect.

Revision Chapters.

By way of apology for you guys sticking around and still following me, here's a sample of the first two chapters of the revision of Sleepless Murder.

Chapter 1

The school bell was just ringing when I stepped into the main office and let the secretary know who I was and why I was there. She smiled brightly and handed me a brightly colored visitor’s pass, which I clipped to the lapel of my coat before heading back out into the hallway. I was there for my nephew, Liam. He was doing a project on what he wanted to be when he grew up and his theme was police officer. He took every opportunity he could to let people know he wanted to be a cop, just like his uncle.

I wandered through the halls of the middle school and felt the nostalgia wash over me. It felt like nearly a century since I’d gone to that same school and I remembered it as being a living hell at the time. We always joked that the school was built like a prison, due to the lack of windows and the honeycomb layout of the squat brick structure. Now, having been to several prisons for interrogations and prisoner escort, I understood how wrong we’d been. The school felt secure to me. An intruder would be lost and easily disarmed.

I stopped in front of the room where Liam’s class was and just watched for a moment. It seemed like nothing had changed in the decade and a half that had passed since I’d occupied one of those desks. Spotting Liam, I felt as if I’d travelled back to that time and was an outsider looking in. The kid was the spitting image of me. If I didn’t know better, I would’ve sworn he was my son. He was small for his age, but I knew he was incredibly strong. The kid played baseball nearly every day and was all muscle. His flaming red hair, one of the few things he inherited from his mother, was cut brutally short, in very nearly the same style as my own.

I shook myself out of my reverie and knocked. The teacher’s voice barely made it through the inch and a half thick door, but I did hear her tell me to come in. She introduced me as Officer Davies with the KCPD. I took off my coat and hung it on the back of her chair, letting all the kids see the badge clipped to my belt.

“My official title is detective, Mrs. Jackson,” I corrected. “Now, unfortunately, I forgot all of my notes at home this morning, so I guess I’ll have to start with Q & A.”

The kids grilled me for fifteen minutes before one of them asked The Question, the one every cop gets at least once a month: “What made you want to become a police officer?”

“My dad was a computer programmer,” I said. “I grew up wanting to be just like him, until he got sick. He made me promise to do something more with my life. I’d always been interested in Criminology, so I studied it in college.”

A little girl in the front raised her hand solemnly and asked what criminology was.

“It’s the study of criminals,” I explained. “How they think, what makes them do what they do, and how to stop them. I got such good grades in that class that my professor suggested I apply for the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit, but I learned that one of the requirements to get into the Bureau is law enforcement experience, so I went from college to the police academy.” It wasn't the full truth, but I felt alright lying by omission to the kids.

“Were there any other questions?” I asked, but my phone started ringing before any hands went up. I pulled it from the case on my hip and glanced at the screen. It was Connor.

“Sorry, I have to take this,” I said, ducking out into the hallway.

“Hey, Connor, what’s up?”

“We’re up, Kaleb.”

“What’s the address?”

“226 Cactus Lane, apartment 2a,” he said in a slow, mechanical manner, most likely reading it out of his notebook. His voice cleared and he said, “Hey, you ever wonder why we got streets named ‘Cactus’ when the only cacti in hundreds of miles of here are in fuckin’ pots?”

“Never thought of it,” I said, laughing. “Can I meet you there? I’m at Liam’s school right now.”

“Yeah, I’ll see you there.”

I ducked back into the classroom and apologized for having to leave. The teacher dismissed my apology with a wave of her hand. “The kids were out of questions anyway, Detective. I hope it’s nothing too serious, where you’re going.”

Liam came up and gave me a quick hug good-bye. I ruffled his hair. “I hope so too, Mrs. Jackson.”

I grabbed my coat and left, dropping the visitor’s pass at the office on my way out. The heat was like a hammer when I left the school. It was late May, school was almost out, but the weather had jumped ahead several weeks. I trotted across the parking lot to my car, tossed my coat in the back and let the A/C run for a minute before pulling out into traffic. The heat meant more than just my discomfort and Connor’s call confirmed that. The heat made people crazy, and when they got crazy, horrible things happened. As I drove, I wondered how many more lives the heat would claim.

Chapter 2

Kansas City is one of those strange cities that grew up on two sides of the state line; there's a Kansas City, Kansas and a Kansas City, Missouri. If you were to talk to someone living outside the metropolitan area, they’d say it's just one big city, and maybe officially it is. But if you talk to a resident of either side, they act like the two sides are two different worlds. Aside from their mutual love of the Royals and Chiefs, the Missourians and Kansans regard each other as living in two different cities and some show disdain for each other, as if State Line Drive were a twenty-foot wall, rather than a few lanes of asphalt. Despite their feelings toward the other half of the city, many residents of one side worked on the other. When I was a patrol officer, I was no different; I worked out of a precinct in Kansas, while living in Missouri. When I got my detective’s gold shield, I transferred to my new department in Missouri. I call myself a Missourian and I’m damn proud of it.

I rolled down the highway into the city itself, where everything was more expensive: booze, smokes, even gas. Realizing the price difference, I cursed myself; I'd meant to pick up a pack or two of cigarettes at the gas station near my apartment. They were at least fifty cents cheaper there and I needed to save every dime I possible. Being a cop wasn’t the most lucrative job ever, especially since my brother lost his job and moved into my guest room.

It was a mile and a half from Liam’s school to the crime scene, but traffic was miserable going into the city, so I turned on the radio to one of the few classic rock stations left and let the music drown out the world.

When I pulled up, the crime scene was a zoo. The street was nearly blocked by patrol cars, the medical examiner’s van, an ambulance and fire truck, not to mention God only knew how many onlookers who had gathered around the building. I grabbed my evidence kit from the trunk of my car and elbowed my way through the crowd to the door. To preserve the chain of evidence, the whole building had been cordoned off with crime scene tape, guarded by the first officer on the scene. He was a lanky fellow in his late twenties with jet black hair and the kind of pale complexion that always plagues night cops.

Visibly relieved that someone else was here to help, the patrolman handed over the clipboard he was holding, obviously the sign in log. I scribbled my name, rank and badge number on the sheet. Connor and our medical examiner, Steven Werner preceded me, as well as Benjamin Saxon and his team of investigators. I handed the clipboard back and the officer let me pass, much to the chagrin of several onlookers. As I walked in, I could hear the uproar from the crowd; several of them claimed to live in the building and were trying to get in past the patrolman, despite the land lord's vehement denials of their claims. I lit a cigarette as I walked up the stairs, driving my teeth deep into the filter as I always did. I dragged deep, feeling the calming burn of the tobacco smoke filling my lungs.

“Kaleb, over here,” Connor called to me when I reached the fourth floor. I met Connor in high school, but we didn’t run in the same circles. I played baseball, while he’d been a football jock. Our paths only crossed once in awhile, usually as I was leaving the ball field and he was coming on for practice. We went to separate colleges but returned home to join the police academy. We were in the same classes all through the academy and, together with the rest of our year, be became closer than family. After graduation, I went to Kansas to finish my on-the-job training and patrol work while Connor stayed in Missouri.

He’d gained a bit of a gut in the years since the academy, but it didn’t slow him down. He was a big man, both through the stomach and across; he'd continued playing football through college and was almost drafted into the NFL he liked to tell anybody who’d listen after he’d had a few drinks. His brown hair was short enough to be respectable and within department regulations, but not short enough to keep it from curling in the back.

I stopped and snuffed my smoke on the sole of my shoe before stalking over to Connor, who grabbed the half finished cigarette out of my hand before I could tuck it into my pocket. “When you gonna give this shit up, Davies?” Connor asked. “It'll kill ya. Plus chewing on the filters like you do, that can't be healthy.”

“It's either that or chew my nails,” I said and set my kit down on the floor. I popped open the box, which was nothing more than a tackle box I’d picked up at a sporting goods store, and grabbed a pair of disposable latex gloves from beneath the tray. I snapped them on and continued what I’d been saying: “I'd end up tearing one off and then my blood would end up at a crime scene, and I need that like I need a hole in the head. Now can we get to work, please?”

Connor nodded and motioned toward the crime scene tape barring the door marked “406” in ornate brass numbers. I grabbed my camera, snapped my kit shut and followed Connor. As we approached, Connor dropped the remains of my cigarette on the floor and made to duck under the tape.

“Hey,” I squawked, dropping to one knee and scooping up the cigarette. “Do you know how much these damned things cost? I need to conserve them 'til I get off,” I said, tucking the half finished smoke into my pocket.

We nodded to yet another patrolman who’d taken up position just inside the apartment and ducked under the tape. Connor began talking as soon as we were inside while I started taking pictures of everything.

“Name on the lease is Theresa Rodgers; we're pretty sure the victim is the same girl.”

“Why wouldn't it be?”

“Eh, you know how kids are; they go on vacation and let their friend watch the place, friend moves in like they own the joint.”

I thought of my brother and nodded. “Go on.”

“A Miss,” Connor consulted his notepad, “Amy Anderson is the one who found the body. The ladies carpool to work; I guess Amy got nervous when Theresa wasn't waiting for her on the curb outside, so she came up and found the girl dead in bed.”

“Guess she had a key, huh? Or do you think she loided the lock?”

“Does it really matter?”

I shrugged. “Probably not.” My eyes and camera fell on Theresa's computer. “We pull anything off that yet?”

“Not yet. I think Saxon’s team is still working on the bedroom. Let's take a look at the body first.”

“Alright, lead the way.”