Writer’s Block

by Phil Temples

“I had a farm in Africa at the foot of the Ngong Hills.”

I wanted to pen a story about a person—a man, woman, I hadn’t decided yet—who lived on a farm in Africa. But the epic beginning line from Out of Africa kept blocking me. Everything I tried to picture in my mind eventually kept coming back to that damned memoir by Danish author Karen Blixen!

Raising coffee beans was out of the question, as was situating the farm on the African continent. Instead, I settled on a young albino little person who started an iceberg lettuce farm on the outskirts of Reykjavik.