I sit here with the rain falling outside my window, and I see little gray glimpses of squirrels preparing for winter out of the corner of my eye. Pandora radio gives me a constant feed of eclectic music. A cold beer sits on the table and sweats, the mountains slowly fading back to white.

I stare at the computer screen. I stare at the paper. The pen. My notes. My outlines. Little collections of index cards with information about characters written on them. Colored markers and perplexing outline software. Word processors and loose leaf notebooks. Piles of reference materials. Prompts and exercises and bookmarked websites.

All of it stares back at me like a crowd of taunting demons. Like those dreams you always hear about where you show up to work or school naked. Inanimate objects that conspire to mock my impotent pens and typing fingers. The pressure mounts and the beer warms while I wonder where to go. What to say. What to do.

Then she screams at me with her playful mocking:
“Just write, you lazy fuck!”