Mash Up by Gardner Dozois

Author:Gardner Dozois
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Titan

NANCY KRESS

WRITER’S BLOCK

When Gardner Dozois invited me to write a story which began by ripping off a classic opening line, I had no hesitation over which line to use. No hesitation at all. “It was a dark and stormy night,” the opening to Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s Victorian novel Paul Clifford, has already been stolen over and over again: by Snoopy of the comic strip Peanuts, by Madeleine L’Engle for A Wrinkle in Time, by Ray Bradbury’s novel Let’s All Kill Constance, and in various forms by Chris Claremont, Terry Pratchett, and singer Joni Mitchell. I wanted to join that august company (especially Snoopy).

Nor did I hesitate about the subject of my story. Writer’s block is the dread of every writer: What if one day I sit down at the computer, reach for the words, and they’re not there? Even those of us not usually subject to this problem – and I’m one of them – know that it could happen. Wells run dry, crops wither on the vine, Snoopy cannot come up with a good second line. But not, in my story, for Rob Carpenter – or at least, not exactly. So: Here is “Writer’s Block.”

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