I Don’t Want to Write (a writing exercise)

The needle is unthreaded and the knot won't tie. The book won't come together, spineless Coptic thing that it is. I don't want to write. I don't want to write.

Lunch tastes like sand and dinner is glass and Gareth isn't home and the house wants to eat me. I don't want to write. I don't want to write.

The pen is too heavy, the paper is too blank. Everything wants my attention all at once. I spin like a dervish, both hands in the air. I don't want to write. I don't want to write.

My fingers are cramping. It's spreading up my forearm. My nails are white. I'm wearing a cast of tension and the cat is winding around my ankles. I don't want to write. I don't want to write.

The timer is ticking and I swear it's counting backwards when I'm not looking; I'm hunched over the page. I can't read my own writing. I don't want to write. I don't want to write.

Paint is singing softly from the Scylla of the workshop. Play with paper. Play with water. Dance with a brush. It calls. It calls. I don't want to write. I don't want to write.

The needles glint and beckon from the walkabout bag, from the pile in the basket, tied by the umbilical cord to massive cones. Come tickle us, they cry, let's wander together through the labyrinth of lace. Let's find the rhythm of basketweave. Swaddle your knees in the blanket, the shawl. Pull out the chenille and let's make the Scarlet Pimpernel (a red Rogue, yes?) together. I don't want to write. I don't want to write.

Pushing ink into the page, tattooing moment by moment.

I don't want to write. I don't want to write.

It's all about exercises. What you do you make more of. Say you are blocked and you are. Say you are too depressed to write and you will be. Say you can't, and you won't.

I STILL don't want to write.

I hear the pipes of the dancing gremlin waving its banner high. How dare you seek wings, he asks. (Yes, tonight he's a he. Stay tuned.) How dare you imagine anyone would have any interest whatsoever in anything you have to say? How dare you delineate yourself in ink like this? How dare you waste the paper? You don't think it grows on trees do you?

I don't want to write. I don't want to write.

I am bereft of all ideas. I don't have a single sentence worth keeping. I have no plots, no thoughts. I wish for a little piece, a flash fiction to tuck in a locket close to my heart. But everything takes miles of vapid paragraphs that natter on endlessly to plow through to the point. The dull and weary point. The point like a number 2 pencil at the end of an SAT exam.

And I'm flunking the verbal score.

I don't want to write. I don't want to write.

The peacock green glass mocks me in its plastic form. I am rigid, it boasts. I am eternal. You are an icky blood sack. Youare written upon the water--nay, upon the very air!! (Water ripples after it's been disturbed, even by so little as a falling leaf.) I will be here forever; even the sun cannot destroy me. I may shatter, but will never rot.

I don't want to write. I don't want to write.

The paste reeks of mint, and so does the kitchen. Visions of dental moulding carved into fantastical creations dance through my head. They whirl with the candlesticks, jape with the paisley brocade runner that more than ever looks like flames and evil leering jeering faces. I don't want to write. I don't want to write.

I'm using a lot of orange and blue in my paint recently. I'm put in mind of a short story every time I mix watercolor--about an artist frantically trying to communicate his own personal vision--Orange is for Anguish; Blue is for Insanity. And yet, when I spin the color wheel, that's what comes up; orange and blue, with touches of yellow. Yellow, the color of the medieval Devil.

I don't want to write. I don't want to write.