The Typewriter

Two

Milo felt certain he had lost his mind, there could be no other explanation.

With the small of his back pressed against the dryer, he watched a man step out of the darkness. The man was tall, broad-shouldered, and moved with the easy confidence of John Wayne through a Western landscape. He wore a gray wool suit, a dark tie knotted at his thick neck. His dark hair was slick and shiny with pomade, a thin, trimmed mustache covered his top lip. When he smiled, his cheeks dimpled.

"This can't be happening," Milo said around the knot of fear that had lodged like a golf ball in his throat.

"The business of writing is damn hard," the writer said. "It takes guts to do what we do."

"I want to scream," said Milo, eyes wide and staring.

The writer gave a little shrug. "I don't blame you for wanting to scream," he said. "The worst kind of pain you could have comes from feeling regret or a sense that something's left unfinished. That kind of pain gnaws at you. It won't let up, not for a second."

Milo was close to hyperventilating. He felt his lungs seize up and his throat constrict. Had he stepped across the boundary into lunacy?

"Take it easy, kid. You look like you've seen --"

"A ghost?" Milo said. "Yeah, maybe I have."

"Look, you called me."

"I did? How --"

"That is a fine opener, isn't it?" The writer smiled proudly and pointed with his thumb at the typewriter in the dark corner. "I rewrote the opening paragraph of that book more than thirty times."

Milo nodded. "I read that somewhere, one of your biographies, I think."

"Start with one true sentence. Once you've got that, you keep going. Don't use the opening paragraph to clear your throat. The rest is scrollwork that can be eliminated. Get right into it."

"That's all very good advice --"

"It's fine advice. And never use the word 'very'. It's a waste of four letters."

"But I'm not a writer," Milo said. He looked down at the floor, unable to meet the other man's eyes.

"The hell you aren't. You just need to sit down and do it. You start with that one sentence, the one you know in your heart to be true and you go from there, and you don't stop, you keep going straight through to the end of the damn thing."

"That's easy for you to say."

"You think so? Didn't I just tell you that it took thirty cracks at that opening paragraph before the right words fell into the right order? Does that sound easy to you?"

Milo admitted that it did not sound easy. But even a difficult thing, in the hands of a master, is eventually transformed, and that, Milo thought, is where he fell short. That is where he always fell short -- somewhere between effort and achievement. The pile of rejection slips he once kept as a sort of badge of honor, as well as a spur to drive him forward, was testament to his inability to achieve anything close to resembling his dream.

"Look," said Milo, "I appreciate you stopping by to give me a pep talk --"

"Do you think that's what this is? A pep talk? Do I look like a cheerleader to you?"

"No, but --"

"Let's get one thing straight, kid, I'm not here to fill your head with pretty platitudes. Got it? This thing you've wanted since you were a teenager, it takes everything you've got, and then some. But if you write close to the bone, touch a nerve, bleed a little, then maybe you'll have something. And maybe you won't. Maybe you'll do all those things and still get a form letter from an editor or publisher that tears into you like a razor blade. There's nothing you can do about it, except keep going. That's the truth, kid. Can't hide from it. Remember, failure starts in the mind long before it shows up in the real world."

The writer said what he'd come to say and turned away from Milo. He stepped back into the darkness of the basement and was gone.