Com-links Up and Running, Captain!

Some days I wish I could just rip all the phones out of the wall at my house and throw them in the rain! Everyone is working against you, even though they’re not even in the same room, house, or maybe even town. The phone rings at all the most inopportune times, right when I’m getting to the meat of a scene, or the part where the character I’m writing at the moment is telling me something about themselves I didn’t know before.

I try all the tricks. I look at the caller ID, my mind being taken away from the place in my head, the walls of that effervescent space melting away quickly like bath soap, and I am now focused on figuring out what to do. Should I answer? Half the time I don’t recognize who’s calling, and when that’s the case, I end up just letting it ring. And that’s the most painful part of the entire process - letting the phone ring for those 8 or nine agonizing sequences - until finally the answering machine picks up.

Then comes the brilliant part where you can hear the sounds of the person breathing, their chatter to themselves just barely audible over the sound of the recorded answering message. Half the time they don’t even leave a message! When they don’t, I curse them! How dare they try to steal away my peace of mind, bothering me with something that isn’t even important enough to leave a twenty second message?

It's infuriating!

It isn’t, however, something that a strong cup of coffee can’t fix.

For some reason, the taste of the coffee clears my mind, cleanses my palette so to speak, and allows me to sit back down at the table and get back into the thick of it.

 So, if you suffer from a phone phobia/annoyance like me, try the coffee. At the least it will give you a boost of energy that hopefully gives you the strength and determination to continue writing whatever you were before the ringing began.