NCW - Christmas Muse (standard:romance, 969 words)
Author: KShaw	Added: Dec 31 2005	Views/Reads: 3328/2221	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Tom Monteath wakes on Christmas morning, and after performing his usual wake up rituals begins to write...

The alarm wakes Tom and reaching blindly for the switch, the bedside
lamp illuminates the room. Dragging himself from the bed he stands to 
perform his daily exercise ritual while looking into the darkness 
through a window that shows only his pajama-clad reflection. Christmas 
morning doesn't mean a routine change. No, he loves mornings; loves a 
cup of tea and listening to the shipping forecast on radio four.  He 
enters the study and cracks the window open for fresh, cool crisp air, 
liking the sound of the waves as they break gently over the shore. 
Reckless, his dog, asleep under his desk, barely opens an eye in 
recognition.  The computer screen shows an empty word document. The 
only sensation is the feel of the dog moving just enough to cover his 
feet. 

Writing is so much fun when an idea comes floating by, as if waiting to
be plucked out of the air and thrashed onto the screen via the 
keyboard, but writing is mostly about not having an idea and then that 
blank whiteness becomes some absurd monster waiting to devour him. A 
blank word document is either the start of an adventure, or a self 
assumed trip into purgatory with the computer screen screaming at 
him... ‘You can't leave me...you cannot leave me like this!'  With his 
early morning tea sitting next to a photograph of his once wife, he 
begins to find something better to say.  Six weeks of hard work has 
produced little he likes and when such things happen a writer is prone 
to lose confidence, thinking himself the first writer with the 
outstanding ability, the peculiar talent of being the only man in 
history to put down five million words without slapping to life one 
substantial character. 

Oh he's read a thousand stories, each one picked up by his own hands,
all written, done, finished, printed, stamped, bound, borrowed, read, 
re-read, repaired and shelved, but not one of those books was written 
by him. 

“A life of writing,” he moans to his dog, “when moons have waxed and
waned, trains have arrived and departed, lives have teetered on the 
brink, suitcases have been packed, and unpacked,  and bells rung in far 
off steeples on many Christmas mornings. But do you think I can 
complete one story, just one small story worthy of a place on someone's 
bookshelf? No! And why?  Because, you dumb dog, I'm always wondering 
what if...? What if a train arrives and I'm not there to see who gets 
off...and guess what, no-one gets off. 

Tom's hand falls to his side, stroking his dog's ears. “It's not your
fault, boy; at least you stayed, eh.” He strives on at his work high up 
over the waves, words forming lines which he reads hungrily before 
highlighting, and with one press of the delete button sends them into 
oblivion. The air is filled with whispered profanities. 

“How's it going, Tom?'  A soft voice asks. 

He sits deeply into his chair and sighs heavily. 

“Ah, so there you are. My muse.” He  sighs again, then looks at her
photograph. 

“I'm difficult, aren't I, the way I live my life....and for what,
because I need to know; I just need to know, and, Katherine, I'm not 
sure what it is I want to know anymore. I'm just glad with all my heart 
that I live the life I do, for my quiet life, finally, and for being a 
writer. I should not have brought you here, not today, not any day, but 
some things can't be explained. I cannot fathom my head to anyone; or 
why it is I do things the way I do. I'm just happy with myself, clumsy 
most of the time, but well intentioned. I never found it easy to write, 
Katherine, truly, yet I love each new story as if it is a new born 
child. The concern that an idea might never happen for me is the most 
fearful thing I can imagine, for there is no one to fight, nothing to 
experience, nothing to me.” 

Reckless pays no attention to the ramblings of a half crazed writer, but
instead changes his position, lying with his paws over his ears. 

“Most people get Santa on this morning, I get you, always urging me on
and always saying there is nothing you can do, that you understand how 
difficult it must be to be always thinking about something remarkable, 
or ordinary, ‘but you can do it.' you always said, ‘because you've 


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