Sam, Elise, and Writer's Block

[editied 7/25/08]

It was dusk. I had my brightly colored notebook I had gotten at Wal Mart and a blue pen chewed past the point of recognition. Hugging them both close to my body, I made my way out of my yard. My mom was on a date, and I was home alone. I was too young to go off on my own like that; my mom would probably have had a heart attack if she had known what I was up to.

It was summer and I was thirteen. I wasn’t supposed to be stuck inside the house all day long. It wasn’t natural.

I’m a writer. I need inspiration. I can’t get that from staring at the same four walls all day. I needed to get out. So I took my notebook and pen and walked out past my yard. There was a soccer field not that far down the road, and I firmly placed my gear in a basket on my bike. I knocked the kick stand out from under my bike, and climbed on. I peddled as fast as I could, keeping my face lowered.

Once I got to the field, I laid my bike against one of the goal posts. Carefully picking up my notebook I made my way over to the other side of the field, where the weeds were allowed to grow of their own accord. I had come here before, and I knew where to go.

I crouched down, and being sure not to drop my things in the dirt, I crawled through the weeds and to a small clearing. It was just big enough where the overgrown plants wouldn’t make me itch and fidget too much.

I needed inspiration. I hadn’t written anything good for at least a week, and I was becoming frustrated with myself. It was the summer. This was when I had all the time I could want to write, but I lacked any ideas! Oh, the irony.

The obnoxious, frustrating, spirit-killing irony! I thought miserably. I closed my eyes, and felt a faint breeze move the long stems all around me. I felt at peace, and calm.

Just then, I heard laughing. I opened my eyes, and listened carefully. “Sam, come back!” I heard a girl call breathlessly. It sounded like they were running.

“If you want me, then you have to catch me!” I heard a boy say, with a faint British accent. I heard laughing and taunting. As quietly as I could, I crawled to the edge of the weeds, to try and peek out.

I saw a girl with long wavy black hair, probably about sixteen years old chasing a tall guy with dirty blonde hair who seemed about the same age, maybe older because he had a patch of hair on his chin. He was fast, and she definitely wasn’t going to catch up with him. She stopped, and kept laughing as she laid down on the grass. It was getting darker by the minute.

The guy, Sam, lopped around the field one more time before circling to the girl and looked down at her, his feet by her face.

“You’re giving up?” he pouted. From where I was, I could see that he was insufferably adorable. I wasn’t sure what their status was. If they’re dating, she would be one very lucky girl, I thought to myself.

“I can’t catch you!” she shouted at him, still laughing.

“Oh really?” he challenged. I couldn’t see either of their faces, but I imagined there was an exchange going on there.

“Yes,” she answered, confidently.

I imagined that he smiled. Very suddenly, he dropped onto the ground in a push-up pose, his face right over hers, they’re bodies going out in opposite directions. She squealed and flinched, thinking he was going to fall on her. He whispered something to her, and then bent his elbows, meeting his lips with hers.

I imagined he said something like, “Then I’ll have to catch you,” before he kissed her.

They kept whispering to each other, and I couldn’t hear what they were saying as much as I strained my disobedient ears. Finally, I gave up, and crawled back to my clearing. The weeds around me were tall enough where I could sit up and no one could see me. I tried to get comfortable with my notebook on my knee, writing down everything I remembered from the scene adding in substitutes for the parts I couldn’t see or hear.

My pen was moving furiously, not caring whether my handwriting was legible or not, until I heard their voices again. I crawled over to where I had been before, making sure there was a layer of stems in front of my face to hide behind. I saw their backs, both holding hands walking towards my bike.

Oh crap. My bike.

“Hey, look at this!” Sam cried, running over to the bike.

“Don’t get on it!” she scolded, as he tried to climb on it. He was much too big for it.

“Why not? It’s probably not anybody’s. They left it here…” he trailed off, looking around to see if anyone was here. I shrunk back into the weeds.

“But you could break it.”

He looked at her. She started back. I couldn’t tell, but I liked to think he had a mischievous grin on his face, similar to the one I imagined he wore before scaring her last time. Which made sense, because instead of getting on the bike he scooped her up, bridal style. I heard her protesting, “Put me down!”

He put her down after a couple more squeals from her. The second her feet landed on the soft summer grass, she was off, running at top speed. He laughed and followed her. They were out of sight pretty soon.

It was getting darker by this point, but I crawled back to my spot, and laid on my stomache. I wrote even faster this time in the orange glow of the sunset.

I realized I didn’t know the girl’s name. She was very pretty, and needed an unusual name. I couldn’t think of one that worked. I bit on my pen instinctively. I looked around, trying to get some sort of idea.

There were Queen Anne’s Lace all around me. Anne? I thought. No, that’s not right. Maybe a different flower name? Lilly? Maybe. Rose? No. Definitely not. I rolled over on my back, staring at the sky. Dahlia? No. There was a famous murder of a girl with that name, or something like that… Suddenly, a random thought crossed my mind. Elise. Perfect.

I wrote even faster now. I started to come up with an entire back story for each character, and I became to know them better than they knew themselves.

As I rode home, my mind kept working furiously. When I got home, I hopped on the computer and wrote it all out. When I finished rewriting that scene on my computer, I finally relaxed in my swivel chair.

The door opened unexpectedly fast, and I jumped. It was my mom, in a daze of excitement from the date she had been on. I quickly closed the word document I had been working on, as she started retelling all the details of the evening: where they went, what kind of flowers he gave her, how he had so much more hair than all her previous dates, and how she thought it was real.

The rest of the summer I worked on that idea, of Sam and Elise, making it into my very first novel.

My mom ended up marrying the man that she had gone on a date with that night. His name was John. It was a lucky night for both of us, i guess.

Life is weird. Life as a writer is much weirder.