In some town, a rather unremarkable one — at least according to those that lived there — there lived a peculiar man.

He was known around town as a man that was always writing. He spent hours in different coffee shops around town. He’d peck away at his laptop until the shop owner would get mad when it was closing time, and the man needed to be roused from his seat.

He wrote on a laptop now, because he was forcibly removed from nearly every writer haunt in town when his typewriter caused caused all the other customers to complain.

Actually, many people would probably tell you that they had never seen him not writing.

If he wasn’t tapping at his laptop or jabbing incessantly at his typewriter around town, then he was scribbling in a notepad he always kept in his pocket. Sometimes, he’d run out of room in the little pad, and then any scrap of paper would do.

He’d annoy the people around town, trying to get any little piece of paper. Someone once took pity on him and gave him a CVS receipt, and it lasted him nearly two days.

He’d write and writer and write.

He was always writing.

And though the people around town had seen strange people before, they often wondered why he was so pre-occupied.

“I have to write,” was all he said to anyone that asked.

“It’s the only reason I exist.”

And most would look at him, and often with pity or confusion, or both. But they’d move along, and the man would just keep writing.

Until one day he couldn’t.

Really couldn’t.

The mother of all writers’ blocks.

He sat in the cafe’s, and the coffee houses, with both his typewriter, and his laptop, but both keyboards would remain silent.

At first, the people welcomed it. The loud typing was gone. And their pencils and pens stopped disappearing.

But, as with most things, the peace didn’t last long.

The man grew more and more irate.

“I have to write. I have to write,” he said over and over again.

People admired the dedication to his craft, but they were getting tired of hearing about it. No one knew how big a deal it was.

Finally, one day, the man went mad for the words, no matter how he tried, the words would not come.

He was in the town square, yelling and crying about not being able to write.

The townspeople came out to see the commotion, and something strange started to happen.

The man who couldn’t write started to fade away.

Slowly, all the while yelling that he needed to write, he grew fainter and fainter, until, to the surprise of those around him.

He stopped existing right in front of them.