I am a slow writer, a failing demonstrated by the factoid that I started this post in Mycenaean, had to switch to Celt-Iberian, then Saxon, and finally Elizabethan English (I figure I’ll touch this up as I post the final version). You have no idea what a hassle it is to be constantly waiting for the runner/post rider/stagecoach/Pony Express (happily, the arrow wasn’t in too deep)/delivery truck to get here with the required Rosetta Stone language package; which also tends to cost muy shekels—er…sorry, bucks. And the change of technology drives me up the wall. This post started out on a nice reasonable clay tablet. Now, it’s a series of graphite marks on a mess of flattened and yellow-dyed wood pulp overprinted with red and blue ink (at least it was dry before the mule train dropped it off). Eventually, it will end up as electrons. Even my slowness forms a feedback loop with the tech. Is it any wonder the amount of time I spend in the Confessional due to my profanity-laced writing sessions caused by the ink drying in the quill and the parchment’s screen-saver popping up between words?

Why am I such a slow writer? There are any number of reasons.

Like many writers I’m slightly distractible (as are you, the reader—probably–if you also are beset by the curse of literacy). No doubt you’ve had your train of thought derailed, as have I, by a butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon Basin (remember—if the order totals $25 or more, shipping is free!). I, for one, find it almost impossible to write a coherent sentence when the pair of mastodons that the neighbor in the next apartment keeps begin to play. The situation goes downhill when the six of them feel the need to discuss the matter at the top of their lungs (it’s also distracting when the .50 caliber rounds come through the communicating wall—as she is a notably lousy shot, the discussion usually lasts until her ammunition is exhausted).

My slow writing is not helped by my having to go back every syllable or so and erase what I’ve written. I’m blessed (?) with fingers having the dance steps of a drunken spider. Besides, one eyestalk seems to be forever getting out of alignment (it’s also less than helpful that the starboard earpiece of my glasses has, at this moment, parted company with the frames and they have just departed formation with my face in a southerly direction).

All of which explains why I never get anything written—that, and never having much of anything to say.

5 September 2011: Feast of Sts. Joseph Canh and Peter Tu.

One Reply to “Why I Never Get Any Writing Done”

  1. My starboard earpiece did not part with my frame. I was simply trying to figure out why everything was so discombobulated when I finally realized my left eye had no lens in front of it. It has to be around here somewhere but I can't see well enough to find it.

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