Two hundred thousand characters,
and close to forty thousand words that
I had bled out, letters sweating
out my pores, the plot meandering
through days off, even during breaks at work,
just trying to complete the manuscript.
The laptop froze, it taunted me.
I turned it off, reminding it
who's boss, then held my breath
in case I was mistaken. The proper
sounds and signals laid my fears to rest as
now restored, I saw the proof in front
of me in black and white. The story
hadn't suffered but was shorter
by some twenty thousand
words than I remembered.
More work to do, of course.
The skeleton's in place.
I face the harder task:
the layering of little details,
taking out trespassing adverbs,
ensuring that the spellcheck
did its job. The tempo must be
right, the notes of what I want
to sing in tune. Mixed metaphors
abound this morning, clearly,
but that's what happens
when a laptop fails to load.
Computer shock is not
the best start to one's day.
(c) Ellen Gillette, 2022
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