A/N: Okay, so Poignant Struggles has gone under major construction since the last time I posted this. I've actually written about half of it already. I'm loving the idea of being able to write this story with the ease I never had, so let me explain how this is going to work now.

Nat's year is going to be divided into months, and each month has a bunch of vignettes that make it up, as well as a quote in the beginning to sort of set the mood. The normal vignettes are under 1,000 words. What I consider to be "big" vignettes, like important ones, are under 2,000. There are just a lot of vignettes then, lol.

So, now that that's settled, here is the first chapter for September, and I do hope you like it! Nat and I would love if you could drop us a review on your way out!!

SEPTEMBER

“I learned that you should feel like writing…like a child stringing beads in kindergarten – happy, absorbed, and quietly putting one bead on after the other.”

-- Brenda Ueland

WRITER

Tick. Tick. Tick.

It’s doing it again. I attempt with little success to ignore it.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

And again. Apparently, I’ve been a bad person, and only now am I reaping my reward.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

If only my parents would let me invest in a bazooka, like the one Heath Ledger had in Batman. They would think I’d mishandle it! The nerve of some!

Tick. Tick. Tick.

I sigh, and put down my pencil, glaring at the device of pure evil – a.k.a. my clock, ticking away like a damn time bomb – and turn away from my still empty page.

The clock says it is one sixteen. It wants me to sleep. I bet my mother put it up to the job. She’d do that if she could.

But, I refuse to sleep. It’s my last night of freedom, of summer air drifting into my open window, flavoring my stuffy room with the tantalizing smell of roses and fresh grass. Tomorrow, I start school again.

Tomorrow, I am going to high school, and I will receive homework. And a lot of it, according to the veterans I’ve spoken with.

On my mother’s mad requests, I am taking three out of my four honors courses. I skipped History for Geography. That was The Deal.

From what I have heard, honors classes are unsympathetic to the delicate, sensitive muses of writers. Brilliant, huh?

Tonight is all I have. I write best at night; something about the stars on my endless suburban sky inspires me. But not tonight, of all nights.

Sometimes, it’s hard to be a writer.

I really want to write something epic though. Something huge, enormous, influential. A tragic love story, compelling as the Titanic (Leonardo Di Caprio, Kate Winslet – you know the one), told with the beautifully easy style of Stephenie Meyer.

Something original, that can be admired and make me famous.

So much for that goal.

All I have right now is a restless, blocked mind, a pencil that needs to be sharpened (I am compulsively afraid of mechanical pencils – don’t ask), school in a few countable hours, honors classes, and a possessed clock. Nothing good can come to a person like that.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

That’s it, I’ve had enough.

Finally caving in to the pleas of my aching head, I climb under the covers full of stuff I’m too lazy to sort through, and conveniently forget to change into night clothes.

Then, with a final note of frustration, I grab one of my smaller pillows, and I chuck it with astonishingly deadly aim at my clock.

It hit it straight-on. The ticking is muffled. The night is quiet once again. I have won this round.

Despite my crappy and completely fruitless night of listening to every CD I own without being able to write anything decent, I go to sleep with a very peaceful smile on my face.