My stagnant fingers grow mud-heavy with grading. Relegated to the same letter-trenches, they add, “Watch for fragments”, “Be careful of run-ons”, and “Cite your sources,” to nearly all my thoughts. Writing is like swimming in a bog.

I’ve never been a free-drafter, capable of simply slamming down on paper the idea, in its worst form. I’m a brain writer, half-composing a symphony of sentences before I turn on the monitor.  By the time I type it out, my story is in its second draft.

When I’m writing, my God I’m prolific. I can slap down six thousand good words in a day. But they stand alone, a tale half-told, for weeks on end, until I’ve figured out the next twenty-five hundred. And then the two pieces don’t match. Tones and moods clash, and my brain is so caught in the suction of “Add your analysis”, “State the logical conclusion”, and “Proofread carefully,” that I botch my own work, over-edit, fail to trust the reader, and undo my own efforts in a wordy torrent that still isn’t strong enough to rip me free.

I’ll get past this. I always do. In the meantime, feel free to peruse my archives and imagine the ghosts I’m conjuring, ephemeral creatures who may never be captured on this unsteady film.