Another blank page. Tim was staring at another blank page. It's stark, emptiness identified with Tim. He felt empty.

One problem was that Tim really wasn't even looking at a blank page. He was looking at a blank window on a colorful screen. That's what stared back at writers these days. White surrounded by gray with a little blinking cursor in the upper left corner. Blinking and blinking and blinking. Didn't that cursor ever tire of blinking?

Blank pages would be more romantic. Tim had read about writers staring at blank pages. They stared into the depths of despair and then found inspiration in the paper. Did anyone find inspiration in a little cursor blinking back at them?

Tim sat comfortably in his comfortable office. Every now and then he would look at his Apple computer. That blank window surrounded by cute icons stared back. Tim had an Apple computer. He had always heard that authors, artists, and all types of creative people had Apple computers. So Tim bought one so he would be a creative person.

Tim rarely felt creative. He had the computer, but all he got from it was that stupid little apple logo staring at him. The apple had the perfect bite taken out of its right side. That perfect little bite. It was a smile of a creative person turned sideways smirking at him. Accusing him of treading into the world of creative people on false pretenses.

Tim sat in his fine chair pulled up to a fine desk. He had a special pillow cushioning the lower part of his back against the chair. The pillow relieved back pain - one of the few physical ailments common to writers. Some days Tim removed the pillow so his back would hurt. That was his wife would feel some pity on him when she came home from her paying job. The ailing back was one of the few things that helped Tim feel like a real writer.

Tim had the chair, pillow, and desk and this was all in front of a window overlooking trees and a pond.

It was man made; artificial, and it often reminded Tim that he was an artificial writer. Real writers would be tapping on the keys. Tim only looked the part; like the man-made pond almost looked like a real one.

A stereo rested a few feet from Tim. It was close enough so that Tim could change the station and volume to fit his mood. Mood? Tim had only one mood. The stereo never changed stations. It sat idle - just like Tim.

The office where Tim spent his days was all comfortable. It was all the stuff the books were made of. He had seen many such offices in magazines that visited the homes and hallowed chambers of writers. Except Tim wasn't writing a book. Tim was staring at a perfect little window on a perfect screen on a perfect computer.

Maybe Tim needed a cramped musty office with a chair that creaked with each new word coming from a typewriter. Typewriters had character. Some typewriters had an "S" that double struck and looked bold each time. They had a carriage return that double-spaced on random occasions. Real creative people struggled with things like that and wrote great books that captivated people.

Paper. Typewriters used real pieces of paper. Tim always felt that laser printers didn't use real paper. It wasn't real when a machine hummed efficiently and pieces of paper rolled out in perfect rhythm. That was artificial paper and so was the rhythm. Real words spurted out in an unpredictable cadence. Rushing with adrenaline and creeping with suspense. Those were real words. The paper came out of a laser printer too fast for someone to bleed drops of sweat onto it.

Tension. Musty offices with creaky chairs, faulty typewriters, and sweat and coffee stained pieces of real paper. Those places had tension. Tension birthed written works of art.

Tim had read that somewhere. Or had he seen it in a movie? Real authors would know facts like that and would impress readers with such at dinner parties in expensive homes. Everyone would be waiting after dinner for the early edition of the paper so they could read the first review of the latest book of the real author. Tim remembered that scene in another long blurred movie when he was a young man. Yes, that would be me. I would enthrall rich and beautiful people at dinner parties with wit, and facts about real authors. They would hang on my every word while they fed me with dishes whose names I couldn't pronounce.

Tension; Tim needed some tension. A place where there was noise, distractions, no perfection. A place that had grime, character, and inspiration. Comfortable offices with a view and a stereo had no inspiration. Tim had to find a place with tension.

McDonalds? The coffee cost $0.something. Starbucks was where writers and intellectuals went. The coffee there was $1.58 a cup. But intellectuals didn't go to Starbucks for $1.58 coffee. They went to Starbucks for latte. Tim was going to drink latte after his first million seller. Tim was going to learn what latte was when he sent his first novel to a publisher. It had something to do with steamed milk, but Tim didn't want to waste time learning about latte. So he put it off.

Tim brought his new laptop computer to McDonalds with him. Damn it. The laptop also had that smirky apple logo looking up at him. Laughing at him. Tim was sure people in Mickey D's could hear the apple laugh.

Tim hated that name - Mickey D's. Mickey D's sounded of fun, noise, parties, even sex. McDonalds didn't have any of those things. Well, McDonald's did have noise. But McDonald's didn't have real, raw noise. The golden arches corporation had found a way to muffle to noises of life.

There were little kids playing here. Tim could almost hear them, but McDonald's had put them on the other side of a glass wall in the official "Play Place." Their pretty young mothers were trading stories of what brand of disposable diapers they were using. Who had the best prices on those things. How they lived through the last ear infection of their little boy. These were things that young pretty mothers with cute little kids discussed. These things had potential inspiration, but the golden arches corporation had found a way to sterilize them behind a glass wall that reminded Tim of the glass walls in the maternity ward where his kids were born.

Still, these people contained some hope. There was a future out there for the cute little kids and the pretty mothers.

Tim didn't seem to have a future anymore. His wife was 40-something and his kids were mid-teens. Everything and everyone seemed worn out. Especially himself. Yes, his teenage kids had a future - their whole adult lives ahead of them. But they had worn out their childhoods. They didn't run around the house screaming with glee when nothing happened on television. They didn't scurry when Tim pulled a Snickers bar from the cabinet, from a place too high for them to reach, but just in the right place for them to see several times a day. The joy, the abandon, the future of childhood was gone.

So Tim sat in McDonald's waiting for the tension to snap into a flurry of words and ideas that would vanquish that blinking cursor and quiet that smirking apple logo. Tim even brought a few pieces of real paper with him. He put his Styrofoam coffee cup on the paper so he could make coffee ring stains on it. Real paper from real authors had coffee stains on it.

Tim found himself making coffee stains on his paper. He spilled just enough coffee onto the table, set his cup on it, and the placed the cup on the paper. This too disappointed Tim. Styrofoam cups didn't make good coffee rings. Coffee rings came from ceramic mugs. If only Tim had a ceramic mug.

Wait. There went a pretty young lady with a golden arches corporation shirt walking by holding two ceramic mugs. The mugs had those golden arches on them. McDonald's had ceramic coffee mugs? There was surprise lesson number one for this day. Tim made a note of that - with a real pencil on a real piece of paper that had a coffee stain on it. The stain was not a real ring, but it was a stain. Tim was getting somewhere.

Tim raised his hand quickly with his pencil still in it trying to gain the attention of the pretty young corporate image walking by with the corporate coffee mugs. He opened his mouth, but the word "Miss" didn't come out. The right word never seemed to come out of Tim's mouth at the right time. Tim stopped and pictured himself for an instant. Laptop computer shut (that dastardly blinking cursor put dead for now), coffee stains (but not coffee rings) on the paper under his right elbow, sharpened pencil poised in his upraised right hand cleverly held between his first two fingers, an inquisitive look of a real question on his face. Someone could mistake Tim for a writer. For an instant Tim did.

The pretty young corporate image walked out of reach of Tim. Tim felt invisible. How could she walk right past him and not notice his plea for a ceramic mug filled with good, fresh coffee? What was the deal? He had held out his hand and mouthed the words. His brain screamed at the pretty young corporate image. Was she and all the other wearers of the corporate image brainwashed into ignoring paying customers?

She kept on her merry way, smiling with a skip in her walk as she moved farther and farther away from Tim. She was so young that she was probably skipping rope on the playground last week.

"Just skip on away from me you oblivious robot," thought Tim.

Someone seemingly programmed her to ignore struggling writers. She could obviously see that Tim was a struggling writer. He had all the signs - coffee stained paper, computer, a serving of swill in a Styrofoam cup, no food, and a pencil held ready to record brilliant thought if such happened to come his way.

How brilliant a thought was it that the pretty young corporate image was an automaton built to ignore? Did Tim's angst show on his face? He tried to flush his brain before anyone noticed his predicament. That erasure moment left quickly. He was, after all, in a McDonald's in the morning. No one here notice anything - especially the employees.

She continued over to a table in the corner. Ah, a table in the corner. Tim would remember to sit in a table in the corner next time. That had more tension, more character, much more like a writer would use. In the corner there were walls closing in on two sides This left no where to go but forward That's what Tim needed, a corner at his back halting any retreat Providing him No alternative but progress. Well there always was the alternative to sit and rot.

Tim's eye caught the destination of the pretty young corporate image Smiling faces, bright eyes, and wrinkles. A table full of old men. Tim caught himself captivated by the morning crowd of old men drinking coffee at McDonald's. A few feet away were toddlers playing behind a glass wall. Pretty young mothers chattering along. The pretty young corporate image was still bustling about pouring fresh coffee, smiles, and hope.

And there were these old men.

The pretty young corporate image grinned at the wrinkled old faces at the corner table. She set down the ceramic mugs and chatted with the old men. Each old man turned his torso to see the pretty young corporate image. Old men can't turn their heads. Time had frozen their stare into the middle of their shoulders. Some looked through coke bottle glasses twisting so they could see the pretty young corporate image through a usable part of their tri-focal glasses. Their vision had been reduced to peering through soda straws.

The wrinkles on their faces doubled as they grinned at the pretty young corporate image's appearance and attention. Each smile she gave was returned by ten times amplification. Why not? A pretty young woman was pouring attention and bad coffee into their lives. Their coffee wasn't as bad as Tim's. They got "senior coffee"; 63 cents, and all they wanted poured fresh into their ceramic mugs at their table. Tim go a Styrofoam cup of $1.07 coffee and no gushing smile from the pretty young corporate image.

This had to be age discrimination. Tim would look that up on the Internet when he got home.

Tim sat frozen watching the old men at the table in the corner. Well, it wasn't really a table. McDonald's doesn't have tables. Tables are for the intellectuals at Starbucks. McDonald's doesn't have booths either. Booths are for restaurants and diners built next to two-lane US Highway 50-something in 1950 something. Booths had character. Booths forced you to sit closer to someone else than you would anywhere other than US Highway 50-something. You had to move if someone else had to stand. Booths forced you to really understand that a person was next to you.

No, McDonald's didn't have tables; McDonald's didn't have booths. McDonalds had a steel bar angling from the floor up to a flat horizontal surface. Some chairs were arranged near the surfaces, but half the people were forced to sit in a plastic couch that was glued to the wall. The horizontal surfaces and plastic couches were suspended in the air by magical technology. Was this architecture to give McDonalds' customer a feeling of floating above life's miseries or was it to enable a minimum-wage worker to mop the floor easier? Tim felt probably the latter. Tim also felt embarrassment at thinking the words "architecture" and "McDonald's" in the same moment.

Tim blinked and remembered that he was staring at a bunch of old men in the corner. They occasionally sipped their senior coffee from their personally delivered ceramic, corporate-logo-decorated ceramic mugs. Time couldn't stop wondering if those mugs would make perfect circular coffee stains on a piece of real paper that had real scribbles of lead from a real pencil and the hand of a real writer.

Tim envied the old men in the corner. They sat in a special area; they paid a special price for coffee; they had a special pretty young corporate image serve them; they drank from special mugs. Tim wanted to be like them. Tim wanted to be special, too.

But maybe, Tim thought, just maybe I am special. I am the only one here with a real pencil, real paper, and almost real coffee rings on the paper. Maybe, just maybe, I am a real writer.

Tim glanced at his real paper. There were real notes made by a real pencil. Amongst the coffee stains, between the stares and the envy someone had written things on the paper. Tim guessed that since the paper was trapped under his Styrofoam cup of swill and his left forearm that he had written those notes.

Tim paused and read the notes that had appeared on his real paper:

"McD's has real ceramic mugs"

"Styrofoam cups make lousy stain rings"

"old men can't turn their heads - even for a pretty young woman"

"McD's caters to little kids and old men"

"old men in a corner same as struggling writer - special"

Tim noticed one more important thing. He didn't have another blank page in front of him. He had a page with coffee stains, character, and words on it. A writer had changed another blank page into a set of ideas, inspirations, seeds of a novel.

The pencil between the first two fingers of Tim's right hand started moving again at the bottom of the formerly blank page.

"who are the old men?"

"what lives did they live?"

"what noble, loving, and embarrassing things have they done?"

"why do they come to McDonalds?"

"who is the pretty young corporate image?"

"does she know the answers to these questions?"

A thought came to Tim. Something he had not thought in a long time; something he had not thought ever. "I have a lot of work to do. I have to meet these old men; interview them. I need to learn their stories. I have to talk with the pretty young corporate image. I have to write their story."

Write their story. Write their story? Write their story.

"Write their story." Those three words felt a lot better than "another blank page."