Inshore Waters (standard:fantasy, 948 words)
Author: Cyrano	Added: Nov 04 2006	Views/Reads: 3528/2241	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A man rises and continues to work at writing...inspired by the idea she will come...if the light is on.

Inshore Waters 

An internal alarm clock wakes Tom. He slips quietly from the bed and
climbs the seventy-two steps to his study. 

He loves mornings; loves that first cup of tea while listening to the
BBC fisheries forecast on radio four. Hearing names like Fastnet, 
Hebrides, Faroes, Dogger, Forties, Viking and many other magical terms 
that describe the coastal areas of the British Isles. Then those words 
such as backing, veering, front, trough, anticyclone, deep low, rough, 
force 8 gale, foundered, broke her back, Goodwin Sands; words that once 
made up the day-to-day vocabulary his father used. It still echoes a 
deep regret, recalling his father's reaction to the news that fishing 
wasn't what his son wanted to do...and worse, learning that what he did 
want to do is write stories. 

All these years later, with that regret still poignant, he's a son who
has seen his fiction on the shelves, written, done, finished, printed, 
stamped, bound, borrowed, read, repaired, and shelved. A life, not one 
of fishing, but one of writing and composing, looking for answers to 
questions that God himself poses. 

Moons wax and wane, trains arrive and depart, lives teeter on the brink,
suitcases are packed and unpacked, bells ring in far off steeples, 
journeys begin, finish, and yet being traveled under soft burning 
September skies. Dogs bark, letters get written, sealed, posted, and 
talk of love or fear or fun...and all these went by unnoticed because 
of writing. 

He lifts the papers from his desk and looks hard at what has gone
before. Six weeks of hard work has produced little that he likes and 
when such things happen he's a man prone to lose confidence. It doesn't 
matter anymore what's on the bookshelves, what matters is the stark 
fact he believes he may be the only writer, the only man in history who 
ever put down five million words without slapping to life one 
substantial character in one small base of a story; not even a comic 
strip in a local newspaper; not one autumn pickle recipe! 

He looks out from the great, round window, standing where a light once
shone out warning sailors to stay away, stay safe, and with tears 
pricking his eyes he fights back the frustration of a blank open 
document on his computer screen. He is thinking how to fill it when two 
arms encompass him. Tears that brimmed now flood and fall. 

“I know there's nothing I can say or do, Tom, just as I know that what
is happening in your head is private and your own. I know how difficult 
it must be to be always going on, to be always thinking about something 
remarkable, or ordinary, but you can do it because you've always done 
it. It's just, well, I can see when you're despairing and sad and I 
love you just the same and just as much as when your ideas come easily, 
flow, and you're happy and fun.” 

He feels the warmth against his back, feels her close. He doesn't turn,
knowing if he does she won't be there. He's a man who has fought all 
his life; if it wasn't with his fellow man, it is with blank paper, and 
the empty space around him. 

Tom moves back to his desk, understanding the necessity of continuing
and striving at his work high up over the waves. An hour passes, 
unnoticed, and his words form lines, which he reads hungrily before 
highlighting a thousand words and hitting the delete key. The only 
resemblance to this writer at work, and one called Dickens, is the 
whispered profanities. 

Above these profanities another whisper, a calming. 

“Tom, you've got to pick yourself up, you've got to finish these
stories; you've just got to finish these stories because the whole 
world is waiting.” 

By nightfall he has ten thousand words on the screen; hard bitten words
that come not from inspiration but from hard work and the belief that 
he's a writer and just the word alone implies professionalism and being 
such does not afford him the luxury of sitting around waiting for 
inspiration to write the books for him; it never had, it never will. 


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