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She spins her pencil. It’s a habit.
“I’m...” She docks the pencil between her fingers. “I’m not very, good. At this sorta thing.”
The wall is silent.
“You know, you sit down, lie down, whatever you’re comfy with, whatever. You sit down and you open up your notebook and you go and write.” The breath meant for her lungs gets caught on something in between. “And there’s the issue, I guess. You go and write.”
“You write what you know, everyone says that, it’s only like, mostly true, sometimes.” And she looks away, rolling her eyes. “I mean, you’ve gotta do research sometimes on stuff. You can’t know everything. And I mean, what if you’re in the middle of nowhere, or your parents sheltered you-”
She rolls her eyes harder, if that makes any sense. “-I would know.” The pencil in her hands is dropped, stabbing her other hand with a hiss that makes it seem a lot more painful than it actually is. “Anyway. Anyway! That’s not the point. That’s really not the point.”
“You write what you know. And sometimes all you’ve got in your head is this stupid fog.” She’s breathless already, not really having stopped to breathe in the past minute. “And, you can think, maybe, too much of it. Maybe you’re the type that thinks too much. Everyone has a moment where there’s too much in your head. Not even in an overwhelmed sense, just, too much, to be coherent enough for a story.”
She crumples on the table, chin on her arms. “And you try and write. But the thing you wanted to write a day ago isn’t meant for the exhausted, tired, overthinking mood, it’s–it’s happy. It’s way too happy. Or maybe it isn’t even that happy, but it’s more...positive, than you’re feeling right now.”
“Maybe you were thinking too much an hour or two ago. You have no clue how long it’s even been, you went and ate and it felt like six hours passed but it’d actually just been 30 minutes because your parents asked you to do a bunch of stuff and you’re just, just tired of-of doing, doing anything, but it’s just the first few days back, so you just chin up, stretch a little, and you’re good.”
There’s a sound that’s maybe a chuckle. Her body heaves like it’s one. It’s not clear.
“Cause, y’know. It’s not supposed to be hard yet. Writing’s the thing you do when it’s either easy, or you need a break. And when you can’t do either of that,” her hands fall on the table unceremoniously. “You kinda just feel like you did something wrong. Or, whatever. I dunno.”
“It’s not the right moment to write it. And, I know-I-I know, I know, you don’t have to-” She wants to punch the argument she’s made up in her head. But she’s not that type of person, because she’s better than that. She likes to think that.
“I...yeah. Yeah.” She blinks. She loses count how many times. “Sure. Sure, whatever. ”
//