VOICES - Black Hawk College

THIS IS WHAT YOU GET WHEN WRITER’S BLOCK CRAMPS YOUR
STYLE
or
Forget Writer’s Block, Plow Through It!
He was seated at his computer desk, hands on the keyboard. “I
hope this turns into a story.” he wrote. “Because I’ve tried like hell for
the past two weeks to write one, but I can’t––which puts a serious
damper on my hopes and dreams. I want to be a writer, see, or at least
that’s what I’ve been telling people for the past few years, and in order
to do that I need to be able to write on command. The problem is, I
can’t.”
He sat back, and breathed a heavy sigh.
Meet Mitch Folcik, a twenty-three year old bartender and junior
college student who has no idea his world is about to be turned upside
down. He is about to take an incredible journey of brevity and lunacy, a
strange combination, to be sure. But sometimes strange is normal,
especially when one finds oneself bartending one’s way through junior
college, in the Twilight Zone.
He paused. “The Twilight Zone?” he thought. “Can I do that? I
mean, do copyright infringement laws really apply to junior college
students?”
Probably not, he decided. Besides, there was another problem.
“And wait,” he thought. “Aren’t I operating from all three points of view?”
He looked over what he had written. And yes, he was. It was a
logistical nightmare.
He shrugged. “Well,” he wrote. “It’s a start.”
“Damn right,” a voice said.
He nodded. “But we need to control ourselves,” he wrote, “before
this gets confusing. After all, we don’t want our readers to be put off by
anything unorthodox.” His face went slack. “Wait,” he thought. “Who
are we?”
The room was silent. “That’s strange,” he wrote. “Anyway, if I want
my story to be good, I have to plan and execute. Stories are like
houses, they’re built from the ground up. You have to pour the
concrete, build the foundation, and wire it up before you move in and
start decorating the place (or using the bathroom).” He paused, the hint
of a smile hovering about his lips. “That’s good,” he thought. “But how
am I supposed to do that?”
He sat back, and pondered the question.
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