Running in Water--Swimming on Land
by alice longaker on April 19, 2008
After a sleepless night, place you feet in large swim flippers. Suspend your dominant arm in a sling. Place ankle weights on your legs and a wrist weight on your free arm. Tape a couple of fingers together for good measure. Borrow a friend’s prescription sunglasses and smear them with Vaseline before placing them on your nose. Run around the block. If you survive the falls and ridicule, sit down at the keyboard and write several pages of your novel in progress.
How far did you get?
After trying this little exercise, you might have an idea of the enormity of a simple task facing a writer with Multiple Sclerosis. Each page forms letter by letter; half of them are misplaced and need correction. However, there is a keystroke of luck; the writer learns to write well-crafted tales—eliminating tired clichés and wordiness. He or she writes from the heart—wasting no stray letters on senseless drivel.
Surely there are gentler ways of learning these lessons, and we await a day when Multiple Sclerosis is only a disease of the past. We also await a day when writers learn they do not have to type everything they think–in blog or book. Spitting words on a page is not writing. Children and adults should not have to face the likes of Jackie Collins or J.K. Rowling and their unedited tomes now filling landfills with waste.
Re-vision means just that—a new vision of the page. Carefully, carefully wonder is wrought.
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