It's Only Temporary

Chapter 33: The Letter (Part One)

This could take a while.

With a sigh, David yanked open his printer tray for a fresh sheet. No problem, he told himself. That was just practice. Just a rough draft. He was ready now. He knew where he'd gone wrong. The pen wasn't shaking nearly as much this time, as he brought it down to the paper once again.

Dear Penelope,

Penelope, he thought. Not Penny. He didn't know why she insisted on going by Penny. Penelope suited her much better. Beautiful. Classic. The heroine of the original epic love poem. Penelope, the patient. Penelope, the pure. The woman who inspired Odysseus to fight his way back to her, across time and space and every obstacle imaginable. Not Penny, the piece of worthless change, rattling around the bottom of some tip jar.

He had it now. He was on a roll. He just needed to keep going, and the thing would write itself.

Dear Penelope,

I have a confession to make.

There now. Much better. He had the opening sentence and everything. Maybe not the most original opener in the history of the epistolary form, but it didn't matter. He just needed to get to the point. No hesitating. Never hesitate. That was rule number one. No fear. No doubt. No hesitation. Of course, David generally applied that rule to womanizing, not letter-writing - but it seemed appropriate under the circumstances.

Right, he thought. He had a confession to make. So just go ahead and confess it.

Dear Penelope,

I have a confession to make. I am in love with you.

God, it sounded lame. He could just imagine her face when she saw it. She would kind of cock her head to the side and go over it again out of the corner of her eye to see if she'd read it right. And then what? Would she start laughing right then and there? She might be confused at first - not totally sure whether he meant it. Maybe she'd think he was just kidding around like he always did.

Yeah, he thought. That's what would happen. First she would laugh, and then she'd mail him back a sheet of paper with a single sentence written in reply:

"See, you always were sappy drunk."

No, no, no. He needed to make it absolutely 100% clear that he was writing this thing sober. Not a drop of alcohol in his system. That led him to sentence number three.

Dear Penelope,

I have a confession to make. I am in love with you. (I'm not drunk right now.)

Wow, that was even worse. Maybe he should get drunk. Since when had he been this bad at writing? Not that he was contemplating a second career as romance novelist, but he'd always been able to string together a decent email. But now he just felt totally... blocked.

That was the problem, David realized with a sudden rush of insight. Not a pussy. Not a coward. He just had a simple case of writer's block! Of course. Even the most experienced writers had to deal with writer's block from time to time. He actually knew a thing or two about it. He'd taken a creative writing seminar in college, and the professor had spent a whole week going over techniques to overcome it. David closed his eyes now, trying to dredge up some recollection of what he'd learned.

Write what you know....

Show don't tell....

Never ever ever use adverbs....

If you're stuck, try free-writing....

That was it. He remembered that exercise the professor had them do. The whole class had to take an empty notebook and write stream-of-consciousness for twenty minutes straight. No pausing allowed. That was the only rule. No pausing, and no crossing anything out. Just keep moving forward no matter how dumb it sounded. It was like turning on an old, rusty faucet, the professor had explained. The water might come out murky brown at first. But if you just let it run long enough, it would eventually become clear.

Good, he thought. Free-writing. He just had to let it flow. Stop thinking so hard. Stop pausing. Just write something. Right now. Don't even think. Just write.

His handwriting grew a little looser now as his pen flashed across the page:

Dear Penelope,

I have a confession to make. I am in love with you. (I'm not drunk right now.) Sometimes I like to picture you in a bathing suit.

Holy crap, he was bad at this. David closed his eyes in despair as he picked up the sheet of paper and began shredding it into tiny little pieces of confetti.

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