WRITERS BLOCK - HAVE I GOT A DEAL FOR YOU KIDDO

Short Story No. 1


New YA writing sensation Miles Johnson has missed a crucial deadline. His agent is losing patience with her latest client. In his solitary studio Miles stares at the black blinking cursor, the only thing on the screen and reality kicks in. ‘She’s not going to show,’ he mutters under his alcohol induced breath. Miles pushes the keyboard to one side, leans over his desk and flicks off the power switch. He grabs his coat from the back of the chair and heads out slamming the door.

Moments later he is walking hurriedly along the bottle littered and dog shit stained Hill Road in South East London, he approaches his destination the infamous Lion’s Den Club. Several unsavoury and burly characters are congregated outside; he takes a deep breath and strolls literally into the heart of the Lion’s Den.

Sally Anne is seated at her regular table in the far corner as Miles makes his way nervously across and is gruffly ordered to sit opposite the infamous boss.

‘What’s your poison?’

‘I heard you can get anything here.’

‘Only with your soul, do you have a soul?’

‘You mean.’
‘You know who I am, don’t you’

‘You’re Sally Anne Tan.’

‘What you after.’

‘Something quick and special, I’m a writer.’

‘Figures, you got that dark night of the soul thing about ya.’

‘I’ve got writers block and’

‘You’re the seventh one today.’

‘If I could only get a page written, you see I.’

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah how many words do you need?’

‘About a hundred should get me going.’

‘No worries kiddo, a soul for a soliloquy, sounds about right.’

‘Thank you, Miss Tan, how can I pay you back.’

‘It’s Sally Anne or SA Tan if you prefer, and sign here.’

NEW WRITING, SHORT STORIES, ROLE MODELS AND STAN LAUREL

This new writing blog ‘Live to Write - Write to Live’ will focus on why I love to write and what drives me in my writing goals. Future posts will describe the ups as well as the downs of my writing day and I will also be posting snippets such as short stories here on the blog. These will also be available later to download as (MP3) audio files.

Every artist has that life-affirming moment when they instinctively know what path they must take, for me it happened quite late in life and today the day of my 61st birthday I have decided to write about it.

I was brought up in the town of Blyth on the Northumbrian coast, never in my wildest or craziest dreams did I ever contemplate on being a writer, not that I wasn’t surrounded by creativity at home, both my father and brother were professional musicians and my great uncle was none other than the great comedian Stan Laurel. Although I dabbled with various musical instruments as a kid and loved comedy I just didn’t see either of those fields being my life and destiny.


Today we hear a lot about how role models should influence our youth, but for me growing up my role models were my parents, pictured here after they unveiled a statue of Stan Laurel in Stan’s birthplace of North Shields. They instilled in me a belief system to pursue one hundred percent what you believe in, chase your dreams, never ever give up and ignore any negativity as this will bring you down.

Sage advice if you ask me and since that moment when I knew I had to write, I have never looked back. My plans for the next twelve months will include a short story collection and my debut novel ‘The Whistleblower.’

A future post will talk about independent publishing and authorship and what it means to me. If you have any questions or comments, please contact me at paul.woods@welovemondays.co.uk