The chronicles of Mark Clemens, Part I

"The best way to overcome writer's block is to simply write. The best way to overcome writer's block is to simply write. But write what?" Mark loved pens. He liked nice pens. Good, sturdy, substantial pens with a nice, clean, thin line. He had a thing for tools of just about any kind, but there was a special place in his heart for quality pens. Any time something important happened in the modern world, pens were present. The pen was the instrument that finalized virtually every agreement between people, companies, and countries. Pens had started and ended wars, countries, families, countries, friendships, treaties, and imaginary worlds. Mark loved to feel the power of undefined possibility embodied in a simple cylinder with ink in it, to imagine what that simple object could somehow do. Imagining was one thing, however, getting all that stuff out was a challenge he hadn't quite anticipated.

"Just write," he thought. The pen was on the paper. The little ball had set down a .7 mm dot of ink and was waiting to roll itself around to lay down some more. "No thought is totally random," Mark thought. "Every crystal starts somewhere, on something. Trees have seeds. Ideas need inspiration." He did not suffer from a shortage of ideas, that was for sure. His head was swimming with nonsensical bits of fantasy and fact that would not stick to one another. He tried to reach out and grab a piece, but each time he did it seemed to swim away out of reach.

Mark took the pen off of the paper, leaving the little black dot sitting between the first and second lines on his first sheet of college ruled paper. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, giving up on trying to push his thoughts around. As he relaxed, the bits of ideas seemed to swirl a little slower in his vast mental soup. Mark imagined he was watching from a distance, a sort of storm chaser on the hunt for tornadoes. He'd spotted an impressive one and was waiting to see what it was going to do. If he looked closely he could see each individual particle swirling around and around, propelled by a force that was itself invisible. He began to realize that the particles were slowing down, and when he looked at the whole tornado again, it had began to take a different, not yet definable, shape. Mark watched, trying to make sense of the form. The swirling slowed even more as the form defined itself. All at once, Mark was sprinting towards it with all the energy he had. The shape did not flee, but waited for him. He leaped the last few feet and tackled the thing, holding it tightly in his harms. His eyes flew open, he sat up. He picked up the pen, put it back on the paper, and began to write.