He stared at the patronizing blank page. It stared back. It was just as blank as it was five minutes ago. Just as blank as it was five hours ago. Just as blank as it was a year ago when his editor had given him a final deadline of six months.
His writer’s block did not stem from conflict. Peter was happier than he had ever been. That was the problem. Ever since the breakout of his first book, Carrots, Peas and Everything About Me: The Story of a Mad Child things had been going well. The public was fascinated with his story of a child prodigy written from the point of view of an infant.
First person writing from a stunted or otherwise unorthodox point of view was not original. Mark Twain and William Faulkner were masters of it. But nobody had taken it this far.
The whole book was written in gibberish. “Goo-goos” and “ga-gas” and “bblbllllsssshhhs” filled the pages with seemingly no cohesive plot, narrative, or words which could be found within the 1000 page Merriam-Webster on the shelf above his desk. That was, of course, until the final page. It was blank save for a single word with punctuation centered in the middle:
Freedom?
Countless essays of analysis that were nearly as long as his book were written about that one word. They were all bullshit.
Peter initially intended to submit the book as a joke — a great big “fuck you” to the faceless publishers who had bought his blog from his manager without his permission. He used to write for fun, but now he felt like the color had been drained from his soul and the joy that made his writing so engaging to begin with escaped him. Shortly after submitting the manuscript, he planned to hang himself in the bathroom of his studio apartment.
To his surprise, they printed it. To his even greater surprise, it became a New York Times Bestseller. The next few months were a whirlwind of press tours, morning talk shows, late night talk shows, late-late night talk shows and such. Every possible accolade of popular culture was shoveled on him. The limelight was starting to burn.
He concocted a plan to take his piles of cash and fly away to Fiji to live the rest of his life drinking kava and eating coconuts until he melted into a puddle for good. Then he met Samantha. She was not a fan. She had seemingly read every book on Earth — except his.
“Completely obtuse, pretentious, unintelligible fuckin’ garbage,” she called it. She would apologize months later as they laughed together in their bed on a blissful late Sunday morning.
“But you’re right,” he confessed.
She was the only person on Earth who saw him for what he truly was: a charlatan. He loved her for it.
The patronizing blank page kept staring at him. Samantha and this blank page were the only ones who really knew his secret, but he couldn’t let the rest of the world know.
What would he write? A horror story? A sci-fi epic? Victorian zombie thriller? Whatever it would be was sure to disappoint. Not to the dumbass public. He stopped having respect for them the second they bought his book.
These thoughts bounced around in his plagued mind and made him dizzy. Then two holy words emerged like the angel Gabriel to unshackle him.
Fuck it.
He decided to spare the life of his one true friend, that virginal blank page. At least for today. There would be many other days which he could spend fulfilling his idea of what a real writer should be and defile the blank page with his nonsense. Or maybe not. Fuck it.
He rose from his desk, carefully placed the paper inside the drawer and went to find his girlfriend so they could enjoy the fleeting summer sun.
Millerwiller 