The Anxious Writer

This is about one of my characters that I am writing. Blogging is confusing and I continue to lose posts. I may have to break down and purchase a package…..of yellow legal pads.

Here is some writing about Ashleigh, one of my favorite characters. She struggles with anxiety, and as our world gets more and more hectic, students everywhere are struggling with this illness. Education and life lessons learned way too fast,

Ashleigh’s story – the anxious writer.

She had writer’s block again, which seemed impossible given the way her thoughts raced. Her teacher had expected a written assignment about some prompity prompt. Again.

Joyful, meaningful, fraught with layers of skill. Ashleigh had layers, all right, but to get to the joy there was so much else. Too much.

Try insecurity for one. Competition created insecurity and there was no escape from that competition. Especially when that competition was with your perfect alter ego. The intensity of trying to fit in, to be your perfect self – you could spontaneously combust in just a moment. Competition, vying with that long, lingering lists of things that good people do was paralyzing.

Ambition, that was another layer. Although, adept at many things, Ashleigh was always slightly behind the curve of her ambitions. Straight A student? 88 in Language Arts. That pointilism perspective piece from art. That piece had hurt. Hours of time spent placing dot after meaningless dot. Measuring, trying to capture all of the images in her mind. Sharp, crisp images with dimension, hard lines, dark shadows. It had scored highly but never as good as Grace, who barely had to look at a piece of paper for a beautiful image to appear.

Ashleigh knew where start now and that was a rip down the center of her white pristine paper, so clean and perfect that it mocked her. “I will show them joy”, she thought, as she laid her head on her desk, refusing to write.