Alex needed the words, but the words didn’t come.
She went into the kitchen, put water to heat, selected a tea can, poured a cup. She took her tea back into the leaving room, sat down, and stared out the window, thinking.
And still nothing came.
Oh, of course, nothing worth writing. Her mind boiled with everyday little matters. Bills to be paid, errands to be run. That kind of thing.
But fiction? It eluded her this morning. And that was a problem, because she was a fiction writer.
And she had a deadline.
Right. Back to square one, Alex thought. What did she have, aside from that deadline?
Nothing.
Ah, but no, that wasn’t true. She had a character. Without a name. It was a pity, because names helped her fix on her characters. But characters seldom appeared with their names attached.
Hm.
On her couch, her cat, Merry, shifted without waking up.
Alex sipped some tea, picked her notebook and a few pens without looking at their colours, and sat on the floor. She opened the notebook on her coffee table.
“Character Name:” It was a vibrant blue.
She changed pens. In an orangish brown, she started firing words.
Intuitive
Punctual
Respectful
Caring
Humorous
Generous
Cheerful
Ah, too many. Time to throw in some negative ones. A dark green spat some more words.
Messy
Cold
Weak
Erratic
Anxious
Now she had something. A black pen, boring, but anyway. In fact, Alex thought, we could even split these into two characters. Miriam. One was Miriam. And Jermaine. What if they’re together? Yes. Yes, they are. They have been a couple, for some time. We’ll have to decide if they have married or not, and why. Later.
Fiction, fiction. There was something wrong with their relationship. Yes. That happens to couples. But fiction, Alex, fiction, she thought. What’s happened? A maroon pen now? Ah, Jermaine met someone… Where does she work? She’s a yoga instructor, and there was this guy. And something clicked between them. And Jermaine couldn’t understand it, because after all, hey, she had always liked women and she and Miriam were a couple and those things only happened in the novels, right?
A deep blue pen. Hugo… no, Lorenzo. Lorenzo was the guy’s name. Ah, how long until Jermaine discovered his true nature? The fact that he had… this glamour? Yes, it had been used before. Alex could change that later. And Lorenzo… Ah, fantastic, he had shifted realities. He had run from his family and his duties (which duties?), but he had a problem because he had found he couldn’t completely hide his powers while in our world.
Alex changed colours. Leaf green. An attack. Strange wolf-like creatures that attack Jermaine when she was talking to Hugo after a class. Only she hadn’t realized they had come for Lorenzo in the first place.
A fiery orange brought Miriam back. Alex laughed as she wrote: “Miriam is a shapeshifter.” Ha. Where had that come from? “And of course Jermaine didn’t know.”
Right. And now it was time to try and see how all of those clicked together.
Alex walked into the kitchen, her mind racing. She grabbed the pot, and for a second wondered why the water inside was hot. She shrugged and made herself a cup of tea.
She went into the living room, grabbing her pens and notebook and sat by her computer.
Merry shifted again and purred, still asleep.
The first cup of tea lay abandoned on the coffee table by the couch, almost cold now.