There I sat…staring at that darn blue screen with the firm knowledge that I had turned on the computer one minute ago just so’s I could sit down and write an extremely profound statement.

Tied up in frustration, I still didn’t care what Ann Lamott says.  I adamantly refuse to carry around note cards and pencils, capturing every random thought.  The gears and wheels in my mind certainly need no encouragement for their incessant prodding that drives me to write. Greek myths have got it all wrong.  Down in the bowels of Hades, I can think of no punishment greater than being sentenced to eternity as a writer, recording endless streams of consciousness.

My wandering mind returned to the blue screen…still blank.  Finally, a French impressionist screen saver painted itself across the screen.  My inspired words of warning flickered “on pause” inside my head as the deep blue screen wound its way through warm-up exercises.  I used the time to look out and study the weather vane on the garage roof.  Was the vane moving? It looked like the start of another beautiful day.

Turning back to the screen, after another two minutes…the computer and I were both ready.  I pulled my chair up to the desk…and…that’s all it was, two lousy minutes…and I had forgotten it…the world’s greatest warning.  I was now ready to write…and I couldn’t remember why I had run upstairs. My profundity had been lost to the world!

Despair gave way to fury.  This was just what I needed!  A brilliant idea…and a mind that had let it slip away.  The pain was too much to bear.  Life was over.  I had been done in.  I was a writer who no longer gave a damn.

I mocked the screen, “I don’t care!  Ha!  Take that!”  Finally…victorious…I  realized that I had forgotten what I wanted to write, and I DIDN’T CARE!

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PAYBACK

Darned blue screen!  It feels good to look at the computer, freed of any need to write…even if it is at the expense of forgetting. Turning, again, to look outside at the weather vane turning in the breeze, I feel calm returning.

Just to reassert my victory, I hit <delete> and get rid of the Monet screen saver.  Primed with my spiteful mood, I type a poisoned missile against the writing  profession and copy the nasty note into a new file called Folly. There!

I glare at the screen and congratulate myself.  “See there. You can’t stop me.  You can’t make me fret over a few stupid words!  Who cares if I can’t remember them! Yes, that’s right!  I’d rather help Sisyphus push his boulder up that ever-lovin’ hill than to have to write all day long.  At least I’d sweat honest sweat from honest work!”

And then I remember!

It had come to me this morning, as I pulled on my long-sleeved, knit purple Henley for the third day in a row.  When you sit at the typewriter, pounding keys, there’s hardly enough sweat to dirty a shirt.  And isolated from people…even if you do sweat and stink…there’s hardly anyone around to appreciate it.

Wearing the same shirt for three days may recommend the writer’s life to people who have never considered writing to be honest work.  However, as I looked into the bathroom mirror, staring at the world’s most pathetic writer staring back at me, I suddenly realized…I had to warn people.  Propelled with the urgency of a mission, I knew I had to make a desperate attempt to warn anyone who might be tempted to pick up the pen and change careers,  A great urgency fell upon me. I needed to warn them in the strongest terms possible and let them know the terrible, painful price they would pay for this smallest of luxuries.  I  spun out of the bathroom, tearing up the stairs.

“I must caution them.”  I knew what I must tell them.

Writers don’t sweat.  They bleed.

Now! At long last…I’ve remembered it!  With grateful energy, I type them out…those few words of wisdom.  Yet, this second time around…when I have remembered and have gotten it down in print…I suddenly realize the more terrible part of bleeding and writing.  No matter how quickly you run to the computer, and how accurately you put down your thoughts,…profound, wise, silly, comforting, or side-slittingly-funny…someone’s been there before you.  It’s been said before.  Many times.  And many of those writers probably said it better.

My one profound thought.  Five words of wisdom finally captured and caged.  But I feel cheap.  It may be profound, but certainly someone has already thought of it and written it down.  I should have stayed in bed.

Trudging back downstairs, I flung myself back across the bed.  Grabbing a dusty treasure I had found yesterday on a back shelf of the small used book store in town, I pulled up the covers to read.  And there on the cover of this dusty-musty book was the wisdom I had fought so hard today to remember…

written ten years earlier…

There is nothing to writing.  All you do is sit down at the typewriter and just open a vein. 
–Red Smith, sportswriter, “observer, commentator, chronicler, and vein-tapper.”[1]

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