A writer walks across a field and suddenly a flash of lightening strikes them: I want to write is the only thing that remains in their mind after the shock fades.
Their spine tingles a little with the electric snap, and their neck feels stiff. No one else around them seems to feel it. No one else seems to notice that they have come to an abrupt halt midfield. But there it is, clear as day, astounding as the clear sky above: I want to write.
They leave the field, not caring which it is; soccer, football, or wheat. They leave the field, and they drive home.
The shock seems to be the only thing that matters. They can feel it flowing through their veins, pulsating in the back of their skull. Word, words, words, they course through the awakened writer; their brain, their hands, their heart.
Every word the world is wrapped in is suddenly at their disposal.
Word. Words. Words. They flicker on their laptop's screen; writing, then erasing.
After a while their hands no longer shake. After a while their eyes become tired. Their spine aches from sitting hunched in the kitchen chair. Soon their hands start to tremble; the writer probably hasn't eaten since noon.
They eat a quick amount of nothing. It doesn't matter what goes in their body, unless its books to fill their mind or vocabulary snacks to sink their teeth into. They browse dictionaries or an online thesaurus, glowing on their face like a fridge, searching it for something to fill themselves with.
Their eyes look back at the page. There is nothing on it for them to read.
The darker it gets, the brighter their screen seems to glow; words fizzle and flounder, unattainably there in the bright white page. They burn like on the sun's scorching surface. The writer blots them out as they try to grasp at the vapor before the words sizzle away and all that's left is water marks, like their dusty laptop screen.
Probably the writer will not write anything that matters that night. Their brain is tired and clumsy, and their heart is on repeat. (I want to write, it says. I know, the writer whispers.)
After hours of typing and trying, they grab their laptop, and they drive back to the field.
There, in the cold, in the same spot where the need to write struck them, the writer sits under the stars and lets their laptop glow on their face.
The people are gone. It is only the writer and the stars now, the writer and the stars and a gaping desire within them to write something down.
But, after hours of trying, the writer realizes that there is nothing to say. So, they close their screen just to open it again. The light of their laptop pulsates in their tired eyes, pouring its white vacancy into them.
They realize that they are no longer looking at the screen. It is more like it is looking at them, trying to figure them out, trying to decide why they stay so long when they have nothing to say.
The glow fills the writer through their pupils, like the morning sun on white sheets; it fills the writer up and smooths them out, softening all their crinkles, every wrinkle, every fold.
The white page peers at them.
I want to write, the writer says.
Only after the screen closes its eyes and goes to sleep does the writer at last go to bed, thinking as they fall asleep about how much they'd rather be writing, and how much they might say.
The desire to write doesn't always come with the words. But the yearning makes it ache sometimes. It drains out your hours and your sleep; it makes you forget to eat sometimes. The writer spends these worthless hours writing worthless things. Words, words, words sometimes lead to pages. But there is only one thing of value on the laptops tattooed face on nights like these: Words, paragraphs, pages, filled with every word the world is wrapped in; all new ways to say with the attainable alphabet how much the writer wants to write.
So, as the sleepy writer slumbers, the heat fades from the tired laptop, and the books on the shelves whisper in their sleep, like distant owls in the night. The cat snores softly.
The desire doesn't sleep, though. It is the first thing on their mind when they awake.
I myself have spent endless hours in that field, searching for the words like a lost wifi connection and looking out for lightning, hoping that the flash will strike, and I'll be able to write at last.
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