Summary:
I was trying to write a TOS novel and suffered from writers' block. So I sat down and added comments to make a
story all of it's own.
Disclaimer:
Paramount is good, Paramount is great, Paramount owns Star Trek. Nuff
said. Any resemblance to actual Star Trek characters is intentional, and
fervently hoped for.
Relief From
Writers' Block
The girl - for she was a girl, really;
only fourteen years old - was a writer. She wrote stories, some of them very
long, most of them about Star Trek; but she had a problem. She could hardly
ever finish them. It wasn't uncommon for her to have five stories she was
work-ing on at the same time, but most of them were never finished, good
beginnings though they may be. She had a terminal case Writers' Block.
On a day in April, shortly before a Star
Trek convention she was going to go to, she was working on a story that could
easily have been a series of books, had she been able to finish it.
Chekov's Enterprise
book
One: what we leave behind
Chapter 1
Commander Pavel Chekov looked
around his quarters, soaking in the details. He'd soon go the way of his
friends and shipmates; a-way. Captain Kirk and Commander Scott were retired,
albeit unwillingly. Uhura was teaching at the Academy, Spock was an ambassador,
and Sulu had the Excelsior. he wasn't
exactly sure where Doctor McCoy had gone, but he was still in Starfleet
somewhere. He, Pavel, had nothing to go to. Another ship, maybe. He wasn't
ready for retirement, and wouldn't take it if he was. He had nothing to teach,
and was only a shipless commander.
Serving on a starship was all he'd known for
twenty-five years. Mostly on the Enterprise,
shortly on the Reliant, a short stint
as first officer on the Excelsior,
lately on the Enterprise-A. He
honestly didn't think he could survive without a ship and the duties and
surprises that came with it. He knew life couldn't be perfect forever, but one
could always hope. Maybe he'd try to see about getting a position on the Excelsior.
He grabbed his things and walked out the
door, leaving his life behind.
~~~
The girl - she had a name, but it's not
crucial to this tale - was instantly afflicted with Writers' Block and could go
no further. She tried forcing herself to write, but all the sentences ended
like
Pavel
wanted to see the admiral but THIS ISN'T WORKING GARBAGE TRASH NO GOOD STINKING
CRAP
Thank God for backspace.
She'd tried leaving the story to stew in
its own juices before, and had a pile of dead manuscripts because of it.
Nothing ever seemed to work.
After a few days, she forced herself to
write something decent.
The
call about reassignment from Admiral Trelany was abrupt, but Pavel was hardly
surprised. He was the only member of the original Lucky Seven that wasn't
somewhere he wanted to be. In fact, he didn't know where he wanted to be.
Waiting
outside her office for a blonde, gum-chewing secretary to admit him, he thought
about it, and none of his options were appealing. The Enterprise was just a ship like any other without her Captain, and he
didn't want to stay there any more than he wanted to retire. That eliminated
two of three options. Getting on a ship seemed to be the only one left.
"You
can go in now," the secretary said suddenly. He nodded civilly and stepped
into the brightly lit office.
The
admiral was sitting behind the desk, staring distractedly at a padd. She wasn't
really unattractive; fifityish, with long blonde hair and dark green eyes. Her
skin harbored a faint greenish tinge and her ears swept upward to form points.
She was half Vulcan, with Human mannerisms. All in all, a strange combination.
She looked up as he entered the room.
"Hello,
Captain," she said. "Have a seat."
His
step faltered a bit as he heard the word 'Captain', but he sat in the proffered
chair.
She
folded her hands on the desk in the placidly Vulcan style. "As you have
probably inferred, you have received a promotion. Congratulations,
Captain."
"Thank
you, Admiral," he heard his voice say. The accent sounded about right,
anyway.
"Your
ship is the Russia." He couldn't
help smiling a little. "It's a brand-new Excelsior class vessel, but we do
not believe there to be any problems left to work out. Most of your crew has
already been selected, but you may request some special crew members."
"I
will have to get back to you on that," he said. His brain was still a
little fuzzy.
"You
first assignment is to accompany a diplomat, Amanda Harris, to Perator, in the
Zedi system, so that she may smooth over an incident with the natives."
Pavel had no clue what incident she was talking about. "You leave in two
days at 0900 hours. Any questions?"
Now
fully in control of his mind, he thought of a only single question. "Just
one, Admiral. Who is the new captain of the Enterprise?"
"He
is an ex-crewman of the Enterprise,"
she said. "His name is
And that's all the further she ever got.
The girl was stuck on the name, a silly thing really, considering how many
crewmembers had been on the show alone, never mind what she could make up. Part
of it was that she had no real idea what was going to happen in the rest of the
story. She knew you should have an ending first, but good advice was hard to
follow.
The story sat for over a week, but she
thought about it every single day. She was continually trying to find solutions
to her dilemma, but never found any. It was, frankly, exceedingly annoying.
Finally, she got uncommonly bored,
exactly one week before the Star Trek convention. She pondered her story, but
thought of a great idea for another one instead. What she found technically
wasn't a cure for Writers' Block, but rather her own personal balm. She pulled
a chair up to the computer and opened Microsoft Works. She then sat down and
wrote this story.