I can t even think of a title for this. I was considering something like, How to write something that s good enough without taking all damn morning to get the job done, but I decided that was dumb. Besides, I don t think people should use words like damn. I ve tried everything. I ve switched from my pencil stub to my special Waterman fountain pen, from my blue screen with white characters to my green screen with yellow characters.
Nothing seems to help.
So I call my friend, the one who always files her income tax return by January 15. She seems surprised. Well, there are essentially two kinds of writers, she explains, brick layers and bull dozers. Bricklayers are writers who are incapable of going on to the second paragraph until they are completely satisfied with the first. Sen tence 1 is absolutely perfect.