433. Fighting With Words

His spirits were as low as ever. It had been another day of failure. Another day of effort that amounted to nothing. Another day of being crushed by the written word and the shrinking likelihood of its fruitful deployment. He was trying to write and he was getting nowhere.

He started the day full of hope, full of aspiration, full of the possibility of success. He began writing almost as soon as he got up, working from a vague plan he’d thought up the night before. But right away there was a problem. The sentences he composed did not satisfy him. Worse, they seemed slightly off in a way he could not place. It was as though there was something missing, some aspect that was not being properly captured by the language.

His frustration with the problem grew until he was unable to continue. He couldn’t accept the sentences he already had, so what was the point of adding to their number? Still, he could not allow himself to give up. Giving up would only condemn him to the interminable void. He had to press forward.

But forward was impossible with the words he already had. He would have to start over and approach the thing from a different angle. But what angle? And more importantly, what was the thing he was trying to approach? He pondered this question for some time before finally realizing it was irrelevant. He would start from where he could start.

Again he took up the blank page. Putting down the first word felt risky, as though the promise of the page were somehow diminished. Then an almost cynical laugh emerged from him. He knew this feeling all too well. He was not so much of a novice that a blank page could scare him. He started to write, in a new voice, one more confident than his earlier attempt.

It was only much later that he realized everything had gone wrong. He read over his work and he was furious. The text was so vapid that the paper had to be sent straight to the recycling so that it could be put to better use. Little did he know this was only the beginning. His struggles with language were about to get much, much worse.