[Critique Group 1] July's Submission Writer's Block 2,119 Words

[Deanna Noriega]

Writer's Block

By DeAnna Quietwater Noriega

"I was ringing up this guy's books in the bookstore and you wouldn't believe
what he said," exclaimed Angie, shoving her granny glasses up on her snub
nose. She flipped back a wayward strand of hair the color of sandalwood.
Widely spaced blue eyes and a pair of faded dungarees gave her the look of a
Wisconsin farmer's daughter-not the fine arts major from California that she
was. 

 

"So, tell!" coaxed Dee, a petite, dark haired girl with the high cheekbones
of her Chippewa ancestors. 

 

"Well, he was talking about you and Tansy. He's in your psych class and was
complaining about you bringing her."

 

"Why would he do that?" Dee said. At her feet lay a large, black Labrador.
The dog's golden amber eyes were fixed on the girl, following her every
move. 

 

"Well, he said to his friend that if you kept bringing that huge dog to
class, he was going to start bringing his horse. Then his friend said you
had to have her there because she's your guide dog. The guy said, 'No she
wasn't' because he'd seen you running down a hall with her coming along
behind you on a leash."

 

"I wonder when that was." Dee mused. "I sometimes answer the dorm phone
without bothering to put her harness on. I guess I might have run a few
steps after a friend inside a building without telling Tansy to guide me.
It's not like I need her help in a familiar setting like I do out on a
street. Look, I've got to run," Dee said, lightly sliding slender fingers
over the face of a braille watch. "I've got English Comp in ten minutes." 

 

"Who've you got?" 

 

"Anderson." Dee sighed. 

 

Tansy moved to press close to her girl and growled softly. 

 

Angie giggled. "Sounds like Tansy doesn't like him any more than you do!" 

 

"I don't dislike him," said Dee. "It's the other way around. He seems to
hate my writing. I get an upset stomach every time I know he's returning an
assignment. He can be so sarcastic!" She dropped her hand to the handle
attached to Tansy's harness, straightened her shoulders, and stepped away in
a swirl of long skirts and dark chestnut hair that nearly reached to the
backs of her knees.

 

A few minutes later, Tansy wove confidently through the crowd of college
freshmen to a desk in the front row. She dove under the attached seat,
curling herself into a compact ball. Dee let her backpack slide to the floor
and started to sit on the seat her dog had located for her. Too her
embarrassment she discovered it was already occupied. She attempted to haul
Tansy out from under someone's feet. 

 

"Girl, when I said chair I meant an empty one! Sorry! I think my guide dog
wants to improve my social life by making sure I meet more of my classmates.
I'm Dee and this devious female in the dog suit is Tansy," she said. 

 

The young man occupying the chair, moved to the next desk.

 

"Ah, no problem, I'm Dave Cross."

 

"Dave Cross? Aren't you in my biology class too? I heard you tell my friend
Angie you're premed," said Dee. "I was going to ask you if you'd be my lab
partner. If you could do the dissections and microscope work, I could take
all of the notes and keep the lab books up to date."

 

"That sounds great. I've already started working on becoming a doctor by
having handwriting so lousy sometimes even I can't read it."

 

Professor Anderson strode across the front of the room to the far wall. As
he talked, his steps kept tempo with the rapid fire of his speech. 

 

"You write like grade school children! These essays are what I would expect
from naive prepubescents, not college students." He tossed all but one paper
onto his desk as he swept past. Pausing in front of Dee, he ripped her paper
dramatically in half and threw it contemptuously in the wastebasket. 

 

"With your disability and minority heritage, I expected better of you, young
lady! Where are your passion, your anger and pain? You are obviously
sublimating because no one with your problems could possibly be so full of
sunny, optimistic tripe. I want you to forget all of that attention to
sentence structure, punctuation, and elements of style bunk and give me
truth. This Pollyanna sweetness and light is crap."

 

Anderson strode toward the door, spun back to resume his diatribe. He was
forced to skid to an abrupt halt by a black bulk sprawled directly in his
path. The dog hadn't been there moments before when he had stomped past the
little blind girl with her tape recorder. He liked dogs. Guide dogs were
supposed to be gentle and friendly. Didn't Labradors have big, sad brown
eyes? This dog stared up at him with the feral, yellow eyes of a wolf. The
expression in them didn't look the least bit gentle or friendly. 

 

"Where was I? Oh yes, for your next assignment I want you to read chapter
two of my book and write about a painful experience. Make me feel your
anguish. Class is dismissed." He turned his back to exit the room. A pretty
blonde freshman cut him off, skipping ahead to block his exit.

"Sir, how long does our essay have to be?" she chirped. 

 

Before he could snarl at the empty-headed little bimbo, something slammed
into the back of his right knee. He staggered to avoid landing
unceremoniously on his backside. The damned dog shouldered by him with her
little blind waif in tow. That buffoon who headed the music department had
dubbed her the wood nymph. With her long, flowing chestnut hair and
childlike face, she did resemble one. It was witches, not wood nymphs, who
were supposed to keep familiars. After twenty years of teaching freshman
English classes, he usually enjoyed challenging the one or two students who
showed promise. But there was something uncanny about how the dog glared
back at him each time he tried to push that little girl she guided to reach
her potential. 

 

As the two of them sped off down the hall, Dee was torn between wanting to
laugh and feeling she should have apologized. Instead, she murmured to her
companion, "That's one way to remove a writer's block!"

 

***

 

Professor John Anderson scanned the pages of the print-out on his desk.
Frowning in concentration, he read:

 

Resolution

By Delia Stillwater

 

The Vow

   "I won't ever let anyone make me cry again," said the little girl with
welts on her back and legs. She had been so excited when Isabel came over,
bringing her new jump rope to play. It had bright red plastic handles with
silver jingle bells on its ends. When the girl's baby brother wanted it and
she tried to give him her own jump rope instead, he threw himself
down-hitting his lip on the bottom step. His screams of anger turned to ones
of real pain. Daddy came out on the porch. She started to cry too, because
she knew the blame would fall on her. Crying never made him stop. It made it
harder to talk and explain. Daddy grabbed Isabel's jump rope from her hand
and used it for the spanking. He yelled that he would teach her to be mean
to the baby. That didn't make sense. Shouldn't he have said that he would
teach her not to be mean? Isabel ran home. Now she would never want to come
over to play again. It wasn't fair! 

 

   The next time her daddy got angry, he spanked her with a piece of wood
until it broke, but she didn't cry. She held her breath until the pain and
yelling went away. When she woke up, mama was holding her and crying. Didn't
she understand that tears didn't help?

 

She Couldn't

   "I'd love to dance," said the teenaged girl through her gritted teeth.
"Could I catch a ride home with you and Beth after the party? Danny seems to
have forgotten he was my date in his eagerness to make that new girl Jean
feel welcome. If I let him take me home I will have to kill him!" She tossed
her head and stepped out onto the dance floor with Marty. She couldn't cry.
She wouldn't give Jean the satisfaction. She didn't want her friends to pity
her. 

 

She Wouldn't

   "Why can't you understand? I need to go to college for at least one year.
I have to be myself and find out who that is before I step from being my
parents' oldest daughter to being your wife." Chad was ten years older. He
had a good job. He owned a home, and her parents were so thrilled she had
found a man to take care of her. All of her friends were envious of the half
karat diamond he had given her. She was a senior in high school and had won
a scholarship. Was she asking too much? Why couldn't he believe she would
come back to him after she had proved to herself that she could make it on
her own? 

 

"You had better take back this ring if you can't trust me out of your
sight," she said, slipping it from her finger. Entering her parents' quiet
house, she closed the door. She took deep calming breaths. She wouldn't
allow herself to cry.

I am thinking this story needs to end when the college student walks away,
but worry that the professor comes across as a single dimension jjerk
without the office scene. 

She Could

"How can you think I would be so shallow as to pretend to be his friend
because he has a car and can drive me, whenever I need a ride? I thought we
were friends!" said the college girl to her roommate, before she fled the
dormitory room. For twelve years, she hadn't cried-no matter how much they'd
hurt her. It had never been safe to cry. If you shed tears, they had won.
They had made you give in to the struggle and they hurt you more because you
were weak. She knelt on the cool grass, pressing her face into the glossy,
black fur of her dog and let the tears flow. For the first time since she
had been a child, she wasn't afraid to let someone else know she was hurt.
She wasn't alone against the world. She was safe within the shelter of her
dog's love. It was finally alright to cry. 

 

            Professor Anderson laid the manuscript back down on his desk. He
studied his student. She sat stroking the silky head of the dog resting on
her knee. Her long dark hair screened her face from him. The black
Labrador's gaze was fixed on the downturned face of the girl. The dog's eyes
shone with a golden glow of devotion. 

 

            "Miss Stillwater, this piece is very different from what you
usually write. It is almost minimalist in its lack of description. It
doesn't have the vivid texture and color of your other work."

 

            Dee lifted her head to face the man who never seemed pleased, no
matter what she wrote.   

 

           "You asked for truth. I don't think there was much color in that
girl's life. She was like a spindly weed struggling to find some sunlight
and nourishment in a vacant lot. I'm not her anymore. If I choose to glory
in the bright, beautiful things all around me, rather than pick at old
wounds to watch them bleed; then that is what is true for me. I won't keep
exploring the past when there are so many tomorrows to anticipate. I have
always loved the poetic beauty of Steinbeck, rather than the stark realism
of Hemmingway. Maybe I will never achieve the elegance of the one, but I
don't intend to be a mediocre imitator of the other. If it means failing
your course, I will write the way that seems real to me."

 

Dee rose. Her hand dropped to the handle of Tansy's harness as the dog
swiftly fell into position at her left side. The two whirled out of
Professor Anderson's stuffy little office. 

 

John Anderson watched them flee. He was only mildly irritated. The stupid
child had missed the point entirely. Only by forcing her to stretch and
struggle would she reach her potential and find her voice as a writer. Even
the ones possessing a grain of talent were too egotistical to see that he
was trying to bring out the best in them when he demanded more effort. If he
wasn't going to write the next great American novel, then he was going to
keep prodding and pruning in the hopes that one of his students would write
it. 

 

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