We can all find excuses not to write. Sometimes, if we're lucky, someone might not take no for an answer...
Font of Inspiration (984 words)
“Pay what I ask or you’ll never see your baby again.”
This is not something you want to see.
I looked at the note again. Big letters, six different fonts.
Obviously it was intended to worry me.
But I don’t have a baby. Feeling more than slightly idiotic, I did a quick check; cats, two, for the use of. One was waiting with eternal optimism by the food bowl; the other perched on top of the printer, helpfully shedding hairs into it. And I’m not the sort of person who refers to my cats as my babies. Usually. Not when anyone else can hear me, anyway.
It wasn’t even as though the message had arrived through the door in a bloodstained envelope. It had just appeared on the screen, right in the middle of my ruddy novel. ‘Ruddy’ being the least of the epithets I’d recently been applying to it.
Obviously I was going mad. Trying to finish this benighted book had finally driven me round the bend.
I wondered about the origin of the phrase ‘round the bend’, and looked it up on Google. It wasn’t, in fact, very interesting. I looked at the manuscript.
“This is exactly what I mean. Pay up.”
Just one font, this time. Comic sans, bold, 18 point. Still pretty threatening if you ask me.
I looked up ‘signs of nervous breakdown’ and only succeeded in confusing myself and feeling even more paranoid. Back to the manuscript.
“Excuse me!” Impact, 24 point.
What was I going to do? Phone the NHS Helpline and tell them I was writing myself anonymous threatening notes?
Maybe it was a poltergeist. If I waited long enough, I might see the keys depress. I hovered the cursor over Google again, about to look up poltergeists, when it happened. No depression of the keys, just the words:
“DON’T YOU DARE!”
I had one hand on the mouse, and the other on a cat, for reassurance. So it definitely wasn't me.
I made a noise like ‘gblah!’ and leapt out of the chair. The cat glared at me.
When I approached the computer again, the words were still there. I didn’t even recognise this font, but it was in bold and at least 30 point. Someone was shouting.
Tentatively, feeling surreal, I typed, “Who are you?”
It came out in good old Times New Roman, 12 point. The editor’s favourite.
“Who’d you think, idiot? I’m your muse.”
For a moment I didn’t think I could breathe, never mind type. “But you sound like a gangster,” I managed.
“How else was I going to get your attention? It’s not like you’ve been listening to me lately.”
"Oh,” I typed. “Sorry.” Was I really having this conversation?
“Sorry my arse. Do you want to finish this book?”
“Of course I do.”
"Then why do you run off to bloody Google every five minutes?”
"Research, I…”
She cut me off. The keys actually wouldn’t work. Damn, it was annoying, like someone putting their hand over your mouth during an argument.
“It’s procrastination. I hate the internet. Do you know you spend at least three times as long on there as you do actually writing?”
“But sometimes I don’t know what to write until I’ve looked it up,”
She did it again. I bashed the keys fruitlessly.
“If you actually bloody listened to me you’d know what to write!”
“But didn’t you help the guy who invented the internet?” I ventured.
“That was one of my sisters. We’re still not speaking.”
“Oh.” I was not going to get into a family argument between deities. I mean, that sort of thing always ends badly. “So what was all that about paying up and my baby?”
“Work it out! If you didn’t have an imagination I’d never have turned up. I don’t appear for people who are already lost causes, you know!”
I didn’t know whether to be insulted or flattered. “OK is the baby my career?”
“Oh please.”
“My plot?”
“Duh.”
“So what about the payment thing?”
“DO…YOU…NEED…ME…TO…SPELL…IT…OUT?”
“Er…yes?”
This time the word was not just in 30 point, it filled the entire page. It was bright scarlet, 3D, and in no font I’d ever seen before. It vibrated.
“ATTENTION!” It said.
Then, just as big and shouty, “PRESENCE!”
Then, bigger and redder and even more 3d, “CONCENTRATION!”
My eyes hurt.
“Get it now?”
“Yes,” I typed.
“Then get off the internet.”
My hand hovered over the mouse.
“Do you want me to SHOUT?” she typed.
“No! Just, may I make a suggestion?”
“What?”
“You could use the internet. You do already.”
“I do NOT!”
The font had gone red again. I winced, but ploughed on. “But I’m always finding inspiration! Pictures, discussions, things other people have written. OK, some of the time I’m just faffing about, wasting time, I know. But not all the time. And it could help you, too. I was thinking - rather than turning up in the middle of a manuscript, which is, you know, a bit scary, how about instant messenger? Or you could have a look at Wikipedia…there’s all sorts of places you could give people a nudge. After all you’re on my computer. It’s all part of the same technological revolution.”
Blank. No words.
“Hello?”
Oops. Obviously I’d pissed her off. I hardly dared try and get back to my story, in case she’d left for good. But I did unplug the broadband cable, and something worked, because I got to the end of the chapter, and some of it was even usable.
And a few nights later, when I was just about to close down after a surprisingly productive evening’s writing, my Skype went ‘bloop’.
The name on the message was ‘Aganippe’.
There was just one word: ‘Thanks.’
Aganippe is a fountain associated with the Muses – but I made sure I finished my chapter before I went and looked it up.
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