1. The Strange Little Man

This is the story of a strange little man sat at his computer desk.

Perhaps not realising the full potential of the information before him, ready to be discovered, he sits, chin nestled in the palm of his left hand, and simply stares at the small black line of the cursor as it blinks in and out of sight.

And for every second that passes, the feeling of self-hatred grows, for he knows that the pure white rectangle that is a blank word document can easily be filled. So why then can he not write anything?

This question has plagued the man for years now, and the only way he could avoid it was to trick himself, make his mind believe that he had no pretensions to be a writer at all.

For a while this even worked, and had it not been for his girlfriend, he might have been happy never writing a word again.

But here he sits, in just a pair of boxers and black t-shirt, trying desperately to think of something to commit to screen, and loathing himself for not being able to. It had taken two weeks to get even this far. Two weeks since his girlfriend, knowing that he would never turn down a challenge, said to him;

“Why don't you write all your stories in one go, get it out of your system. You could do one a week for the whole of next year.”

With her successfully forcing him back to the computer screen, he could not feel more adrift, for it seems that his power of creativity (what little there ever was of it) has left him entirely.

Finally, the strange little man sits up straight in his swivel-chair, pulls it closer to the desk for a more comfortable position, and puts his fingers on the keyboard.

By the time anything of length appears on the white rectangle, he groans, for all he has done is write about why he was trying to write again. He would have to do better than that. But at least for now, it was something, and upon looking up the word count and seeing it read 385, a moment of profoundness seemed to sweep across him, and spoke out loud;

“Fuck it, that'll do for this week.”