Day 25 - Dread

 DREAD

Prompt - Dread : Write about something you don't want to do.

They're there in front of me.  The one that's shining out, so much white there waiting, the other teasingly patterned, challenging me to make some sense from it.

So I ignore the challenge and go to the loo, taking my book with me.  When I come out I haven't finished the chapter I'd begun so I'll make time t read to the end.  Bit of a cliffhanger there, so I must read the next chapter.

Can't do this all day, can I?  I return to my desk.  There's a wee tasklist sitting there.  Nothing urgent, is there?  Depends on how you define urgent.  I can see plenty reasons why they should all be done, not just soon, but now.  So I play a bill, buy those CDs I'd been promising myself, browse through possible PC replacements.

That took more thought, and time, than I'd realised.  I should go and get a glass of water.  Or maybe a hot drink?  Bit of toast?  I read my book as I eat and, of course, finish the chapter.  And the next one.

Best go back.  The snow blinding blankness of that white screen is there again.  Does it look angry?  Impatient?  Or merely resigned to my terror?  I have some hand written notes to be captured, so if I do a bit of typing I'll have my fingers loosened up when I come to start.  I'll have flow.  It will be so much easier.  But they don't take long.

I sit there, breathing heavily, flexing fingers, angling my head from side to side, a bizarre warm up routine.  I am ready.  I am not ready.  I can do this.  I cannot do this.  I want to do it, I don't want to, I have done it before, I have not done this before, it was always this hard, was it always this hard?

It is the same as last time, and the time before.  I am the same as last time, and the time before.  Time.  I am running out of it, running away from it.  Dread takes me into a place where my head refuses to make the fingers hit the keys, gives me false guidance, allows fear to take control.  Fear of starting, fear of failing, fear of being unable to end, fear that I will have forgotten how to do it.

I cannot, must not, put it off any longer.  A deep breath, type in the title.  There are words on the page.  I begin, I move on, I stop, I start, the word count grows, the sense of there being some meaning to the syllables, the growth of sentences and paragraphs, the unfolding narrative giving me the courage the white space had sucked away.

I will be as scared tomorrow.  Writing is always like this...