There it was again.
The block.
So many times she'd confronted it, and it was always the same: the endless, towering stone thing that stood in the way, separating her from fulfillment. A blank and unflinching barrier, too tall to climb and too broad to bypass. All it ever did was sit there—bland in its banality—as it locked her out from where she could unleash the stories that yearned to emerge from her mind. She was a writer of paints, but she needed the canvas, and this entity prevented her—thwarted her—from reaching it.
It blocked her.
She tried talking to the block many times, and while it listened to her pleas—with infinite patience—it never once acknowledged her plight. It wasn't rude, not exactly, but it never appreciated her predicament. Of course it wouldn't bow, stand aside, or offer a doorway. It was a block after all. But neither was it cordial. It never agreed, it never disagreed; when she made tea, it didn't comment on the aroma; and when she brought snacks it never thanked her.
Sometimes she caught the slightest hint of movement in the block, a nudge at the distant edges, as if it were stretching or adjusting itself to better be comfortable while holding hostage her muse. But never would it migrate, not even begrudgingly.
And in this it would stay for hours. Days sometimes, exhaustingly durable and impossibly frustrating.
It was just...
There.
Until it wasn't.
It would simply be... gone with no explanation—and it never offered so much as farewell or a courteous explanation for its recalcitrant immutability.
But this day was different. The block had been particularly persistent, and she reached her limit. Maybe it was because she'd forgotten her snacks, maybe the cool touch of early Winter had become unusually irritating, or perhaps it was simpler than that: the tiresome repetition of it all had finally broken the part of her that remained as accepting of the block as the block was of her.
At long last, after many, many aggravating encounters with this monstrosity of indifference, she found herself with no further patience. Her civility and her willingness to endure were utterly spent.
Her stories were ready, but she needed the canvas to tell them. And tell them she would—
But for the block.
The fucking block!
The ideas welled up within her like boiling water, but they wouldn't emerge—not without the canvas. And this senseless thing was in the way.
No more.
She punched it, kicked it, scratched it.
The block remained.
She screamed and taunted it, hurling insults that she’d long held back—and she even threw her brushes at it. They clattered useless and futile on the ground.
As always, the block didn't respond. It was ever so tolerant and infuriatingly even-tempered while it kept her from realization—from the destiny she desperately needed. Her stories were trapped, locked within her, and, unable to release them, she withered—sad and deficient.
Defeated.
In a final, defiant expression of exasperation she threw her paints at it, rendering a splatter of oil on stone that dripped downward, forming a diffuse composition that lacked logic. It was some kind of creature crossed with several trinkets and environs that didn't belong.
Infuriatingly idle, she scorned the block and ignored it—it wouldn't be offended. While brooding, her attention drifted to the bizarre blobs and streaks of paint that her angst had manifested. She picked up a brush and drew several lines. Then she drew several more, trying to separate these clashing notions in the splatter. In it, she sensed a past and a future and she let the brush dictate the journey.
And dictate it did.
With the brush as her vehicle, she explored. Some paths died out, acknowledged but no less unfortunate, while others she granted life and vibrant discovery. She added shapes and colors, unveiled emotions, found balance and perspective, and authored its domain.
Near the end, she gave it light and shadow—and even a name.
After a while, the splatter had become something else, something she recognized—unplanned and unintended, perhaps, but from her all the same. And despite the block, she felt completion at last. Fulfillment.
A story had emerged.
That was when she changed. As she stared at this impromptu product of her vexation, she decided she didn't mind the block so much anymore. Looking left, right, and up she saw that it went on and on, endless in its commitment to keeping her from the canvas. And in that ceaseless expanse of obstruction, it gave her something.
Boundless opportunity.
If the block wouldn't let her pass—if it wouldn't let her paint her stories on the canvas? She would paint them on the block instead.
She would tell the stories here.
It would be her block.
Her writer's block.