Struggling Writer

Ian and Sinead have something in common: they both have Hyperacusis, a rare condition of the inner ear that makes everyday noises painful.

Chapter One -- IAN

My basement is my favorite place to write.

I have a typewriter in front of me, a fan propped up just inside the door that is blowing warm air at the side of my head, and a deadline for Thursday on a novel I’ve spent the last two and a half months hammering out.

It’s mid-July and a balming ninety-two degrees in Rolla, Missouri.

This novel is fine. This novel is good. I have no doubt it will be a bestseller like the others. But it’s ordinary. It’s stale, much like this room. I’ve written murder mysteries for ten years. I’ve hidden more clues and murdered more people in my twenty-six books than I can count.

I stew in my desk chair, rocking back and forth, the squeaking of the chair replacing the sound of my fingers on the typewriter’s keys. My eyes glue themselves to the small text on the alabaster paper. I pat my typewriter on the side, ironically, for my own silly amusement. Also, in admiration.

I wrote my first best-seller on this old, powder blue piece of junk. And I’ll write my last on it.

My home is quiet. For ten years, I have liked the quiet. I’ve craved it. It’s become a necessity just as much as writing novels has over the last decade.  Quiet is essential or both my ear condition and my writing.

But this morning, my home has never felt so vacant and so harrowingly silent.

I’m thirty years old in a week. I have no wife, no children, no friends to speak of. What I do have are my typewriter and my fame and fortune.

I stand, stretching my legs, to walk up to the kitchen of my large, furnished home. My footsteps echo in the empty space as I make myself another cup of coffee; my third cup today.  Thankfully my own footsteps are not uncomfortable to hear.

It’s noon, which means I’ve written seventeen words in three hours. Three hours, three cups of coffee and seventeen words. I let out a long sigh.

I decide to eat lunch, making myself a large, bulky, meaty sandwich with mayo, ketchup and honey mustard sauce. I trade in my coffee for beer, though I’ve never much liked the taste of the recreational use of beer. I keep it in the fridge to feel more… normal. I drink a beer once in a blue moon and imagine myself in a bar or at a party, living a life.  Having a life: the ultimate fantasy for a Hyperacusis sufferer.

All I have written is murder and mayhem. And that’s fine. That suits me. After all, it’s what I’m good at.

But I’m yawning at writing. I’m yawning at my typewriter. I’ll admit it. I want something new. But what other genre of fiction writing could a depressed basement hermit like me produce? Nothing of note, perhaps.  Do I even have any more novels left in me?  Am I dried up like the well outside my home? Have I lost the will to write as well as the will to do most things?

No, that’s not true.  I have the will. I have all the will in the world to walk out my front door and stay outside all day, enjoying the birds and the sun and the sound of traffic, people calling to each other over white picket fences and dogs barking.  Of course, I cannot do this.  That would be an enormous mistake on my part.

I eat lunch slowly so that the chewing doesn’t harm my ears and make my way back to the typewriter. I write thirty-two more words. They’re mainly terrible, rookie sentence fragments that mimic my own thoughts and not my character’s. I write those thirty-two words and decide to go for a run on my treadmill.

I run as a hobby more than for exercise and fitness. I run sometimes as little as ten minutes or as much as six miles.

It depends on my mood.

I run only one mile today, pushing myself to that familiar near-death exhaustion that sometimes is the only thing that keeps me going.

When dinnertime rolls around, I fume over the fact that I haven’t written any more words today. I’ve simply been sitting or pacing about my home, sipping drinks like a woman in labor eats ice chips. I roll my story’s plot around in my head while aimlessly cooking two burgers. I add cheese, salt, and pepper, along with a tasty barbecue seasoning while adding a little lettuce, tomato, mayo, mustard. It dawns on me, as I take my seat on my living room sofa, that my dinner very much resembles my lunch. I sigh, taking that first scrumptious bite. I frown and plop the juicy burger back onto the plate I’ve left on the coffee table. I glare at the television that I realize never really shuts off. Dr. Phil is on, which is odd for this time of night. I keep the volume low.  Always low.

I glance at the clock above the TV. Seven o’clock. It’s nearly dark out now, the sun setting somewhere behind my house, casting shadows onto the neighbor's windows. All their shades are drawn, I notice, while my windows are… shadeless. Why? Why have I never put curtains up?  Do I like the idea of people looking in at me?

Maybe… Maybe it gives me a sense that someone somewhere knows that I’m in here, trapped by my own ears. Maybe someone will see me in here one evening, staring mindlessly at the picture box and knock on my door, wondering who I am and if I’m alright.  I’ll have to ask them to keep their voice down, but maybe I can have a conversation with them? It’s been months since I’ve talked to another human being face-to-face.

I take a long shower, my ears plugged by heavy-duty ear plugs sponsored by NASCAR. They work the best, so I buy them in bulk: twenty dollars for a whole box.  That lasts me about three months, so it’s worth it. The shower, though not necessarily too loud with the earplugs in, irritates my tinnitus.  For the rest of the evening, I’m stuck with a noise in my ears that sounds like a room full of crickets.  It doesn’t die down and it doesn’t allow me to sleep very often once it starts up.  

I sit on the edge of my bed for four hours before I finally collapse onto my pillows, exhausted, while the crickets roar on in my ears. The last little piece of my daily routine has been completed once I’m finally asleep. Tomorrow, it’s the same day again.