Last night, I killed it. Asphyxiated, strangled, mutilated, and pummeled it to death.  Annihilated.  Amazing, that bright and early, the very same morning of last night’s crime, before it died, I had been certain it was my ticket to fame.

It was my perfect chapter, the climax, the focal point, the suspense…the reason a reader would stick it out, reading all the way to the end, every chapter before the perfect chapter where it would all come together and the reader would know she had just finished a book written by a genius of a magnitude too great to be described.

But such an important chapter could use just a little refinement.  Just a tweaking.  A preening, a cleaning, a once-more-over before I sent if off to dazzle some editor.  I printed the perfect chapter, and took it to our group’s Tuesday morning editing meeting.  Just for a little review.  Maybe take out a word or phrase, here or there, change an ellipse to a dash, a period to a semicolon.  And it would be perfection perfected.

I passed the copies around the table.  We read each others work in silence, seven pens scratching on 20 lb. paper.  Seven writers editing, quiet and thorough.  I brought home my edited chapter and laid it aside for later.  No hurry.  I could tackle this little bit of work later tonight.

The afternoon passed. Vic and I went out to test drive a car one more time.  We had dinner out, wine and spinach-artichoke dip, and good conversation about all the things that had made the day so perfect for each of us.  As we talked, I thought about my perfect chapter back at home.  Vic paid for dinner, and I felt plump and satisfied, ready to finish the day at the computer.

At home in the office, I flipped through the edited pages, taking quick stock of the work I faced.  Out of eight pages, several passed inspection without a single change.  Of course.  They were perfect.  A few red suggestions from Andrea, and more black suggestions from Sharon, perfect suggestions, mostly.  I set about to plug them in, moving the cursor about here and there, and voila!—I had it finished!!

Now, I could have turned off the computer and gone to bed.

But when you are staring at eight pages of perfection that you have authored all by your little self, who can blame you for wanting to read it through just one more time?  I looked at the clock.  Nine twenty.  Only ten minutes before bedtime.  Perfect.  I could read a bit of perfection and then go to bed happy, satisfied…fulfilled.

Moving the computer to page one, I began.  And like hitting a brick wall I hadn’t seen before, I asked myself, “Why didn’t someone catch that in the editing process?”  It wouldn’t be hard to fix.  I grabbed three words from the end of the sentence and moved them to the front.  No.  Better to delete them all together.  And ten minutes later, cutting out the first paragraph all together, I had rewritten the intro into two succinct sentences.

Bit by bit, I moved through the perfect chapter, pinching, plugging, stretching, deleting and bypassing problems that seemed to pop through the glass screen like computer blackheads.  I looked at the clock.  Eleven o’clock, and after all my serious efforts to fix the perfect chapter, I hated it.  I wanted it to die.

If this is what professional writing is about, then who needs it?  I filed the stupid story back into its databyte file and banged the <enter> key extra hard just to see if I could make the computer lose the file by accident.

Now, the morning after the night before, knowing my poor battered chapter is waiting to be revived, I just stare at the screen and dare it to try to bring back the loathsome eight pages.  If they know what’s good for them, they’ll stay just where they are!!

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THE WRITER’S LIFE
TABLE OF CONTENTS

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Copyright 2013.  All Rights Reserved.

So you’re busy.  So nobody knows the trouble you’ve seen.  Well, dear Editor, life’s too short to mince words.

Shape up.  Read your own guidelines.  Follow your own rules.  We writers have the right to be rejected in writing!

The best I’ve seen this year is one penned note slopped across my carefully drafted letter and stuffed into my self-addressed stamped return envelope…the all-important SASE…the SASE you require from writers who submit their work.  Thank you!  Other than that…

No return envelopes returned.

No answer to letters asking about missing self-addressed stamped return envelopes…with new self-addressed, stamped return envelopes enclosed.

Only two magazines have taken the time to draft a thoughtful list of possible reasons why my article is not suitable.  A simple checklist folded into the SASE.  And they even took the time to write a personal note at the bottom to elaborate.  Two magazines out of hundreds.

Christian magazines are the worst.  As if Christ has an objection to business manners. One year has passed, a year to receive a return note in the SASE from even one well-known, major Christian magazine, “No thanks.” One year…and zilch…nada…zero.

Sally Stuart says editors are tired of writers who don’t read.  Well, editors take note.  I’m tired of editors who can’t stuff a pre-printed “no thanks” note in a SASE.

Life’s too short.  God doesn’t require that I get published.  He just asks that I try and do my best.  But he asks that of editors, too.  And it’s not your best to leave writers sitting high and dry when a simple rejection could be sent out.  Or a checklist with one box checked to explain…a checklist returned in the SASE…the same SASE you requested in your writer’s guidelines…

…or a note in the SASE, “holding for consideration“…

…or a letter in the SASE, “can’t make up my mind.”

No response is a no-good answer.  If you ask for a SASE…then use it.  Follow your own guidelines.

*************************Humph!

Not sure I feel better.

But it’s been fun.

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THE WRITER’S LIFE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Jill Krementz has spent her life capturing photographs of famous writers.  She was lucky to meet Eudora Welty, luckier still to capture her seated across the room at her desk in the early morning glow as it poured from the garden through the wide southern windows.  Profiled in an erect posture, hands over the high-top typewriter, Welty was an immovable fixture of the room.

On each page of Jill’s book I look into the spirit of authors seated at their writing desks, their hands and minds frozen in a thought:  Amy Tan, Kurt Vonnegut, Russell Banks, and over fifty others.  Tied together in the spirit of creation, these authors are prepared to write their souls into their stories for me to later read.  On the written page, they trust strangers like me enough to take us into their confidence.  They love us enough to share of themselves.

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I wake at 2:30 a.m. and rise to move through the house as a lost writer.  Pictures of these ‘real’ writers return in the darkness, and I hope that they might understand me, if no one else is able.

I zap a cup of hot tea without turning on any lights and let the computer wind its way through virus checks and automatic programs, opening window upon window, finally to stop upon a picture of a calligrapher’s pen slanted across a page.  WordPerfect is ready.

In front of the bright screen, I sit and close my eyes, top eyelids barely resting upon  lower lids.  Ten tired fingers poise above the keys, knowing just the right feel of “j” and “f” that keep right and left hands in their proper spaces.

Years ago, I struggled as a senior in high school to memorize the positions of all the typewriter letters.  Yesterday, using Meavis Beacon’s computer self-teaching program to improve my accuracy, I got lost.  The typing instructions broke apart words and forced me to think,…one…letter…at…a…time.  In full concentration my mind worked hard.  But the thought required for me to push the proper finger down on the letter “d” slowed my typing, and my fingers tumbled out of turn making silly mistakes.

Now in the early morning darkness, eyes closed, I submit everything I am to my fingers.  Hot tea within reach, I ask God to protect me from writing anything unworthy, and I simply let the ideas and feelings mix together somewhere up near my shoulders and begin flowing slowly and mysteriously down my arms, through my fingers one at a time in such rapid succession that I can’t even begin to think the words.

Letters appear like the ticker tape of Wall Street, picking up speed, and draining out the thoughts that were building in my mind as I slept.

Had I really been sleeping?

We think we need to be awake to direct our brain, so that it will know what to think.  Yet, asleep, my brain works through the night, without my ‘wisdom,’ and it wakens me, telling me to move:  “Put it down on paper.  You aren’t smart enough to remember in the morning the things I want to tell you in the dark, and you aren’t brave enough to think them on your own in the light of day when you are awake.”

I am truly only a bystander.

When my brain allows my fingers to pause, when I am allowed to participate in this personal trance at the typewriter, I reach out in the darkness with one question only, “God, is that you?  Am I the only one who hears your footsteps as I work?”  I feel I hear them just as loudly as any of those ‘real’ steps that will begin to sound in the hallway three hours from now when the kids awaken.  If I allow myself to write my own question on the page, will the fingers take it away with the delete key?

Maybe I should take over the keyboard from the ghost within.

When some stranger reads this, will he use the mention of God’s footsteps to prove that I have finally lost it, that I am crazy?  Dr. K on television called my God a myth, with a smirk, dismissing him as the fiction of small minds.  But Dr. K. doesn’t sit with me in the early morning hours, with this very small mind of mine, a mind of limitations, questions, an exhausted mind,…a mind too tired to choreograph ten fingers on a stage of computer keys.  Maybe if Dr. K could place his fingers upon mine, he would feel the presence of some other greater mind.

When I finally reach the bottom of an idea and feel the last sentence wind its way upon the page, in fear I reach out into the darkness again, “God, is that really you?  Have I let my ego, my own cleverness, take control?  Have I sent you away by trying to be more of me than you wanted?”

I let the question hang in space.  My hands grow still.  Vic and the kids breath silently in rooms down the hallway.  Traffic whooshes along the freeway outside in the night, people trying to make real progress on the interstate before the world wakens and joins them.  I sit quiet still, hands poised and waiting, my mind empty and tired.

Then, unbidden by me, the fingers start moving again, and I let them.  I turn off the questions, turn off the answers, and let them do their work alone, waiting for the last sentence to finish, the last word, the last letter, and finally the period.

It’s over.  I’m tired. I don’t care what Dr. K says and what he might use from his world of science to prove I’m crazy.  I feel the arm of God around my shoulders saying, “It’s all right.  You can sip your tea.  There’s time to rest for a minute or two.   Go ahead, open your eyes and read.  It will be all right.  I promise.”

Here in the darkness, in an unbidden trance of words, how much of my soul have I released onto a white page?  What kind of picture would this make for Jill?  And if God understands, will anybody else?

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THE WRITER’S LIFE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

For the past year now I’ve been “writing” stories and essays in my mind.  While baking in the kitchen, I’m writing thought-stories.  When I’m raking up leaves, when I’m sitting on the couch before the sun comes up…I’m pretend-writing.

I’m afraid now, having relegated writing to a mental thought process, that I’ve completely discounted the effort it takes to put these very thoughts down on paper.   Contented on the couch, I tell myself, “If people want to know the story, let them read my mind.”

In spite of the writer’s anxiety, rebellion, and the fear that have chased me for the past twelve months, I’m grateful to God for interrupting my writing passion.  In this last month, I’ve settled down into a deep well of quiet.  Above me, the words that jumbled and danced endlessly around in my mind have moved off the dance floor. They sit in chairs along the side of the room, in chairs, on the floor, leaning against the wall with their legs straight out, cups of punch in hand, and dreamy eyes staring into space.  Everything about their attitude says, “We don’t care if anyone asks us to dance or not.  We like sitting here.  We’ve come to appreciate the colors of the lights as they flit across the people moving back and forth to the music.  We don’t need to dance.  If we danced, we wouldn’t get to see the dance picture.”

Words and thoughts sit around the walls of my brain.  They’ve learned to be happy just where they sit.  It’s difficult to think of just the perfect persuasion to coax them out and onto the floor again, to fill them with the pulse of music, and to encourage their dance across the page.

God tells me, “That’s all right.  You were too taken with your dance-words last year.  You thought they were so pretty.  You forgot they were meant to dance to My music.”

I sit with my words today and ask them, “Are any of you ready to speak?”

The room is quiet.

We all sit still and listen.  Waiting.  God takes His own good time.

The silence is just the perfect space to feel His arms around me, his loving warmth.  Why ruin the moment by leaving the quiet?  Who can give me and my words serious reason for joining the jostling in the middle of the dance floor?

For today, with my words, I’ll sit back against the wall, take hold of my own glass of party punch, stare across the room, and catch the glint of His light as it flits and sparkles across the golden bodies and faces of His creation.

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THE WRITER’S LIFE
TABLE OF CONTENTS

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Copyright 2013.  All Rights Reserved.

Dick Cavett sat on the stage and confided in us.  He had finally made it to the big time, national television, with the stage all to himself.  He was earning big money for this hour of glory.  And he knew we were smart enough to know how big the big money was, bigger than anything we could ever hope to earn.

He smiled and looked directly into the camera.  That, he said, [his fame and money, of course] is something he intends to take home and point out to all those sniveling wretches back in his home town, the ones who used to make him feel small.

I’m sorry they hurt his feelings.  Really.  But, just the same, it seemed like a pretty nasty thought for someone who had been given the whole stage to himself.

I quit watching Mr. Cavett.  And I felt sorry for his friends back home.

Now, about Woody Allen?  I wasn’t surprised at all when he talked about the poor slobs he had left behind.

I never felt really convinced about all his self-deprecation.  It just seemed too commercial for my tastes, particularly lending itself to a movie mogul’s smug attitude…I’m on top, and I’m sure you’d sell your soul to have lunch with me.  And don’t you wish you had thought of that when I was just a little schmuck in your high school biology class?

I had never watched Woody Allen.  After seeing his poor schmuck chortle, I knew why.

After all, if he were truly self-deprecating,

…it might occur to him that his life would be slightly improved,

…if he took time out of his Hollywood day to have lunch with me.

I think of these people only because I plan to send off a manuscript soon.  I’m reminded daily that I’d better plan on having it rejected mega-zillion times.

I’ve been through enough rejection in the past forty years to think I might finally know how to handle it.  After all, even the biggest seller on the New York Times list is still unknown to 95% of the world.

I don’t need a huge audience.  Over the years, I’ve been content to write each of my stories to one special person.  My reward each time was the smile of a friend who recognized something special about herself in my words.

I don’t need to be famous.

I don’t need to be rich.

When I drop the envelope in the mailbox, I’ll remember that rejection is just a “phase.”  It should be just a stair step to the second person who might read a story of mine and recognize a little bit of truth.  And if the story brings a smile to her face, and if she’s an editor, just maybe that might be enough to put my story and my book into print.  And that’s only worth something if it makes a third person smile and think of something good to tell her own friends.

In the scheme of things, having a book in print is not such a big deal.  It’s most certainly not big enough to lord it over all the people who have been a part of my life.  Even if they didn’t like me very much.

After all, good stories can be written even about people who don’t like us, and if that’s not enough to make us grateful for the experience of knowing we’re dislikable, it certainly doesn’t give us reason to spit in their face.

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THE WRITER’S LIFE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I’ve never experienced Writer’s Block, at least not as most writers explain it.  I’ve actually experienced it in somewhat the reverse…Blocked Writer.

I sit down, ready to write, the words just ready to pull together into a …wait…the phone rings, the car is dead two miles away, rental car for husband, tow truck for car…

…back to writing, the ideas flow, word added to word, page builds upon page, to the climax, the phone rings, Justin is sick, the computer locks up…

…pick Justin up at school, a smell wafts down the hall, computer still locked, a good story dumped as computer crashes, the burner on the stove blows, the sprinkler system explodes, a river runs down the street, the doorbell rings….

Judy just stopped by, if I have time, her life is a mess, and she is still looking for work, while we’re standing in water running down the hallway, nothing but a broken hose on the washing machine, hours at the laundromat, phone calls and appointments with repairmen for the car, the sprinklers, the stove, the washing machine, the computer, and the sick kid.

Even if I haven’t sent out one story to one publisher to receive one rejection letter…the mailbox is always full.  There are bills for water and telephone, taxes to be calculated, broker statements showing stocks going down, going up, going down, stock newsletters in a pile covered with dust.  Who can believe it’s already 6:00 p.m., no dinner to cook, no milk, no bread, no butter or eggs, call out for pizza, vegetarian without cheese…hey, who took this call from the attorneys?

The court hearing is rescheduled…maybe,…depends, hours to pour over documents that mean nothing to people who meant nothing when they signed them…

…time to write, time to write, write what, are you kidding, when do you think you’re going to have time to write, just organize, prioritize…

If you want it, make it, time to write, sell everything, the house, the sprinkler system, washing machine, phone, computer, husband, kids…then how are you going to order pizza, and without pizza, how are you going to write?  Writer’s block?  Yeah, I’ve heard of it.

I finally gave up.  And when I did, God took over.

“Hey, you down there, Ms. Big-Shot-with-Lots-to-Say.  It’s about time you gave up.  I was aiming to explode your dishwasher next.  But now that I’ve got your attention, here’s what I want to know.  What’s so important that you’ve got to sit down and write it anyway?

“I’ve already said it all.  Jesus.  Remember?  The Bible, remember?  I’ve seen you reading My Word each morning.  What problem in life can’t be settled by My Writing?  What can you say that hasn’t already been said,…by Me?

“Oh, I don’t mind if you write.  I just wish you’d settle down a bit.  Splashing words on paper might be fun, but don’t you think you’re taking it a little too seriously.  I mean really, you keep saying it’s your ‘Gift.’  Just where did you get that idea, anyway?  Gift, my girl, are you looking for a gift?  Pinch yourself.  Squeeze yourself until you hurt.  Face your reflection.  You’re the gift.  You.  Love’s the gift.  I offer it to you, to your family, your friends.  It has nothing to do with words, with writing.  That’s just an occupation.  It’s fluff.  It’s stuff.  Love is the gift…through you.

“If you never have time to write one word, it will be no great loss.  There’s plenty of words where I come from.  Besides, it’s all been written before, by Me.  And who’s listening anyway?  Now living…and loving…that’s another thing.

“Jane, you’re made for living.  You’re made for loving.  You’re made for expressing My Love.  You don’t need to write for that.  In fact, if you spend all your time writing, you might forget what you were made for.  Just be, Jane.  Be Love.  That’s hard enough.  If you want to write to earn money for pizza, that’s OK by me.  But remember the real gift.  If you don’t, I’ll stand in your way.  I created words.  I own Writers Block.

“I don’t want people to know you by reading.  I want them to know you by watching.  Be Love.  Reflect My Love.  That’s enough.  And it doesn’t require words.”

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THE WRITER’S LIFE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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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Basilea Schlink wrote about her sacrifice of years in solitude required so she might write about God.  It takes a saint like her to find something good about the writer’s curse.

While writing does relieve certain mental disturbances, it’s also one great kill-joy!  I look out the window just now and think how inviting the green hill looks, bathed in full sun, the wind tickling the treetops.  How marvelous the view would be on a day like this, actually sitting for hours…looking out and up to the hilltop.  Yet, I have a book half done, and it’s only a wasted effort unless I complete it.

I have two terrible choices.  Either I can leave the pages boxed away in the storage room and spend the rest of my days hiking, quilting, cooking dinner for friends, and weeding the garden.  Or I can sit at this blankety-blank computer and finish the darn thing.  The first choice means that I was foolish enough to waste days upon days upon years writing half books for no good reason, a petty self-indulgence.  The second choice means I was foolish enough to waste days upon days upon years writing entire books for no good reason, a petty indulgence.

The only difference between the two choices is that if I should be petty and selfish enough to make full books out of half books, I might find an agent, an editor, a publisher, and a reader who will share my folly and make me feel somewhat relieved that I’m not the only petty, selfish person in the world.  And that’s not the kind of choice that lets a writer sleep soundly at night.

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THE WRITER’S LIFE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Now before you get too excited about the naked part, let’s consider the statistics.

In the Dictionary: The Complete Guide to Interpreting Your Dreams, there are ten common themes and symbols that appear in many people’s dreams.  At the top of the list…you guessed it…nudity…and flying.   Taken together, that is a lot of people who have dreams of flying naked.

Even in our dreams, we’re all properly horrified, putting our hands in all the proper places, hiding for cover, asking everyone we see to please give us their shirt, their pants.  After all, they’ll still have their bra and underwear.

Writers, though, are the only group of people who can make a career out of taking the worst of a really bad situation and trying to have something good come from it.  Flying naked?  It may wake you in a panic, teeth chattering, hands clutching at the sheets…but at least you can write about it.

At that point, getting beyond the first sentence of their story, many writers realize that their best work is done without clothes.  Letting go of their last fear, an exposed writer is free to tell the truth.

Clothing?  In the worst of cases, some writers may self-destruct when someone else comes into the room with a mirror for the sole purpose of exposing their nakedness.

But for the truly courageous writer, who keeps her eyes on the canvas…

What a joyful discovery to learn that…

If you fly high enough and well enough, people will quit looking for your clothes and they’ll actually start to notice that they’re naked, too.  But neither of you will feel quite as badly as you did before.  Or quite so afraid.  And that will make you glad you started flying naked.  And writing.

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THE WRITER’S LIFE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

     It’s taken me two years to learn to use the delete key on the computer.

It’s easier to explain if I tell you about the little metal contraption my father gave me in the 70’s when I owned a Sony reel-to-reel tape recorder.

That was back when Vic and I spent hours creating custom-made music tapes, recording 12-inch plastic albums onto long-playing reels of shiny brown tape.  Hours of music evolved into days of music, as our stack of reel-to-reel tapes grew taller.  Alas, this is just the sort of happiness to foreshadow tragedy.

Unexpectedly, one day arriving home, hot and tired, I caught the sight of one of our precious tapes…unwound, chewed, bundled, draped, and broken…all of it covering the far end of the living room floor.  Christie the puppy dog apparently loved these tapes as much as we did and had entertained herself by shaking the reel back and forth, excited to see the brown glossy tape wind out bit by bit into a tangled, slobbery heap.  Neil Diamond’s Hot August Night, riddled with teeth marks, had been savagely chewed.

And this is why Dad gave me his metal contraption, a tape splicer.  That night long ago, with a jumbled pile of tape on the kitchen table, I set to cutting and splicing.

The little metal splicer fit neatly in the palm of my hand.  It was a tiny aluminum “table” with two hinged “doors,” side by side clicking down tightly across the table…like the magician’s box lid for sawing the lady in half.  With the mess of tape in hand, I found where good tape began on each side and laid it across the track groove in the middle of the table.  I closed the two lids, left and right, over the tape and snapped down a baby guillotine. I cut out long stretches of mangled Neil Diamond songs and watched them slither to the floor under my feet.

Then, raising the magician’s trap door, I applied mending tape.  Voila!  The tape was reconnected.

I loved the magic of the tape splicer.  But Vic and I always missed the pieces of songs, especially so because, as the tape played along and hit the splice, Neil was instantly jerked from throbbing drum beats to a quiet, heart-rending ballad.  The tape looked whole and new again, wrapped around the reel.  But inside, there were cuts and bandages where wonderful music had been executed, and you never were able to completely forget.

This brings me back to the ‘delete’ key,–magical, but sharp as a guillotine. I can use it, but it’s not nearly as much fun as the aluminum splicer.  Besides, I miss every vanquished word.  Each one is a special note in my writer’s song on the page, typed in a moment of literary genius.  What an act of irreverence to remove them with a delete!  It’s all the more hideous when you watch how quickly someone can highlight an entire chapter with the Control+A and delete an entire day’s work.

I prefer the days when writers wadded up the paper and tossed it on the floor under the typewriter.  At least, with the wreckage at your feet, you were aware of the long hours of labor. If your mind went blank, you could kick through the pile, pick a dead page up with your big toe, and toss it into the garbage.  If you changed your mind, you could retrieve it, smooth out the page and put it back on the desk.  You could iron it flat.  Fondle it.  It was yours.  You gave birth to it, even if it was terrible.

I don’t care what my computer guru says, once you hit delete it’s gone.  I know there’s an undo key, but I have yet to remember this before I hit a bunch of keys in panic and scramble Mr. Undo’s memory.

Sure.  I can hire someone to come in and search through a hard disk and ‘reconstruct’ all my lost garbage.  But I’ve never been really happy watching anyone renaming files and restructuring my disk, especially after one or two choice, and highly costly, “Oops.”

Delete is writer suicide.  It’s just slightly better than a computer crash.  In both cases you lose some highly creative verbal “stuff.”  Forever.  And there’s not one shred of evidence left behind to prove you would have been the next Margaret Mitchell, if not for the Delete.

Oh, I can press the delete key sure enough.  It’s just that I’d rather not.  

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THE WRITER’S LIFE
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Eventually…you come to A More Mature View of Delete

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