I rest my fingers on the light grey keyboard and stare at the screen.

“Come on, think of something,” I mutter to myself. My mind, as always, stays stubbornly blank.

I lean back. My chair, a wood and metal monstrosity that must be the first swivel chair ever made, creaks and groans like a man in pain.

Creaks and groans like a man in pain. I like that. I should write it down.

Now don’t get sidetracked, you’re writing a story. Well, not so much writing as in “putting in words right at this very moment”. More like writing as in “will write as soon as I get an idea.”

What about a death story? They like death stories. But how should my character die? I think for a moment. Murder. Murder’s always good. Probably with a knife of some kind, in the privacy of a teenage girl’s own home, the only place in the world where she feels truly safe. Yeah, it’s ironic.

I lean forward, deciding to begin at the beginning.

The TV gave a small blip as the screen went blank. Chelcey set the remote down on the coffee table and slowly rose from the brown leather armchair. She yawned and stretched as she moved to the door into the hallway and switched off the living room light, surrounding herself in utter darkness.

For a moment she considered turning the hall light on to light her way to her bedroom, but decided not to. This was her home, after all. She didn’t need a light to find her way through her own home. It was her castle, and she knew every inch of it. This was the place where she felt safe from all the dangers of the world, the only place.

But Chelcey should have turned on the light. If she had she would have seen him, hunched in the corner with his ragged trench coat and stringy hair, cradling a butcher knife in his...

No, no, NO! This isn’t working. The second paragraph uses the word “light” too much, and the third switches viewpoint. Plus it’s obvious I stuck all that “It was her castle” junk in there in order to be ironic. I frowned at the screen as I pounded on the backspace button.

How often do people really get murdered, anyway? I don’t care what those TV specials says, it can’t be that common. I don’t know anyone who was murdered.

Now what’s the most common way people die? Car crashes! A car crash story, of course! But my character, a guy this time, I think, can’t crash for some boring reason like weather or stupid animals or stupid people. It has to be more dramatic.

I’ve got it. He’s upset because he just had a fight with someone. Should it be his girlfriend, to add a touch of sad romance, or his dad, to add that vital family dynamic? Or maybe his dad just left him. I’ll figure that out later. For now I’ll just start in the middle.

The rain beat on the car roof and the bridge swayed in the wind, creaking and groaning like a man in pain, but he couldn’t hear anything over the sound of blood pounding in his ears. All he could think about was the fight-the yelling, the screaming, the throwing, what he should have said, what he should have done...

Suddenly all of his thoughts were interrupted as the car swerved out of control. He grabbed the steering wheel and fought to straighten the car, but it was too late. It spun wildly, spraying water as the wheels churned through puddles.

“I’m sorry Jenny!” he called as the car careened over the side of the bridge.

I still can’t get the feel for it. I delete it and glare at the freshly blank screen. I’ll try one

time, I decide, and then I quit. Drowning, this time. Drowning is poetic, and I’ll begin at the end.

The next morning a fisherman found her floating in the shallows. Her long, pale hair drifted on the greenish water, like a wet halo around her face. Her skin was pale as milk, except for the red marks around her throat where she had been gripped. Her open eyes, their sapphire blue clouded over, stared unseeingly up at the mossy branches and...

Wait a minute, does a drowned woman float with her face up or down? I forget, but I’m pretty sure it’s different for men and women. And would her eyes be open? Oh, forget it, I’m quitting.

Except... I erase the paragraph and type one more line, the very last line of my new story.

And they lived happily ever after.

Now that’s a good story.