If It Were Up To Me



The night brought with it many ideas, some new, some very old. There were also some lessons spread thoughout, that I believe I understood. At least I don't think I made any major mistakes during my sleep. One can never tell.

This morning I was giving thought to the piece I wrote a couple months ago called, What We Shall See. I just thought of it again and it gave me an idea for a story. A guy who fancies himself a writer but who is, in fact, a hack, tries to write something every day. Sound familiar?

Any, we join him the day after he had written a piece that so astounded him, so blew him away, that he became afraid. What was he afraid of you ask? A piece of writing no matter how good or bad, can't actually hurt you. It could hurt your feelings. It could offend you morals, or your ethical outlook. It could be an affront to you writerly stuffness, if you had any. For example, a college level English composition professor might get nauseated or digusted, reading some of the trash that I write. But, it wouldn't go further than that.

Well even that far is an interesting premise. What if you wrote something that could actually kill a reader? Like the Monty Python killer joke.

But my idea had to do with the writer who suddenly wrote so fluidly and fluently. so effortlessly and with such meaning. The words came to him as if fed through some connection. Sentences each so perfect, that he never looked back at the,  And paragraphs that assembled themselves like perfect proteins spooling from a ribosome, He never looked back at the previous word or sentence for fear of missing the next one. They were coming to him as if God himself whispered in hi ear. He cried and then he laughed, as he typed. He was moved to his soul. He ached for a drink of the tea sitting beside him but could not tear his burning eyes from the screen as he typed. He worried that the power would go out or that he would have a heart attack before he finished the piece.

As he reached about 4500 words he began to experiment with slowing a little and he found he could actually speed up and slow down at will. But most of all he was typing the contents of his life. All the little recurring thoughts and worries and hopes, not venal things like cars and bicycles and beautiful women and money. No, these were the matters that lived deep within him and as they flowed onto the LCD screen in front him they were phrased in simple, words that felt like sweet cream in his mouth as he said them. Each word in each sentence fitting perfectly with the word before and the one after. It was as if the sentence had one correct way of being assembled and he was building them without effort.

He would type a word and realize it was the only word that could really fit there. No synonym would have the same effect. As he struck the key for the last character in that word and hit the space bar, his fingers would move, as if on their own to begin the next word that came into his mind and he would feel the two words fitting together in his mind.
No rephrasing would do.
conveying the meaning that before


I just realized I was writing the piece and so I need to get to this.

More later,

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