As a writer I have never had “writer’s block,” but I have had to face the “editor ghost.”
Sometimes my fingers dance, but often they stumble. When ideas flow, my fingers jump for joy, until the editor ghost halts everything screaming out — “spelling error, typo, where is the comma?” “Ah ha!” and it zaps its red marker under a word, “misspelled word!” it shrieks. My fingers halt, backtrack; and finally give up and hit the ctr alt del keys to log off. “We just can’t get it right” they sigh; “lets play spider, we nearly always win at that.” The editor ghost laughs and fades back into its evil Microsoft Word spell and grammar-checking abode, content at its success. “The pages must be correct and sentence structure proper to be allowed on one of our. docs” it sneers. “We are only here to help you,” growls Mr. Punctuation; “you wouldn’t dare turn us off,” laughs Mrs. Spell Check. Ideas fade and the dancing fingers retreat into the Spider’s web.
Beautiful words, Judith. I am so, so hard on myself with writing, especially when I go back and re-read my work. I am always thinking, delete this word, replace it with this other one instead, maybe a different punctuation in this sentence could create a different effect with the meaning of my words. I love how eloquent your writing is!
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So funny how you personify the MS Word suggestions, Judith. They can be so discouraging. I once read a student essay with all of these weird, unnatural phrasings. It was a student I knew was a pretty good writer. So I asked what happened and she said she was just trying to avoid the green and red marks!
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I enjoyed the post and about editor ghost. I liked your vivid interpretation of editing your work and how it “trips” you up at times. I really don’t get a block when writing either, but I sure do have times where I face the editing trials you write about.
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