Thursday, May 08, 2008

The Frumious Bandersnatch

Well, this is a little embarrassing. Not long after I wrote the previous post, I opened up the Word file with my story in it, just to look it over. To say goodbye, maybe. I should have been on my guard, but thinking of it as I did, as a terminally weakened and feeble creature, I blithely clicked on the file. It pounced. With all the indignation of a jilted prom date, it gnashed its teeth on my feeble excuses. Declaring its place as a legitimate child of my brain, it insisted that if I couldn't place it in its proper seat in the pantheon, I at least had the obligation to shape it with enough strength and suppleness to allow it to claw its way up as best it could.

I babbled agreement and retreated, shaken, leaving it to prowl filepaths and snarl at the occasional typo. Every time I opened my laptop, it would slink in the background and make sly, suggestive gestures. Whenever I gave in to temptation and tentatively typed a snatch of dialogue or a dribble of description, I felt better knowing that I hadn't yet consigned my story to the limbo of unfinished tales. It's coming together better than before. Maybe all I needed was a break.

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