Writing Resources from Fifteen Minutes of Fiction

A writer's constant companion

Balance, turn, scrape... balance, leap, rest. I glide through my day over rough and smooth, never following the same pattern twice. My world is filled with a neverending list of swirls, dots, loop-the-loops and curlicues. I am forced to move without free will, slave to whoever has me in their possession.

At times my master grasps me roughly around the middle, poking and jabbing me at the target, pounding me onto the surface as a butcher does a meat cleaver. At other times, his touch is light and loving, he holds me in a caress and sweeps me through the air.

When I rest, I am still. I lie in wati, never sure when my services will be called on again. As I grow older, also I lose height. Once slim, angular and tall, I become stubby and chewed. "Well-loved" I once was described, and though I remember myself when young and innocent, I know I am proud of what I have achieved. I have shaped many a thought, and will continue to do so until I am nothing but a pile of wood shavings at the bottom of a waste-paper basket.

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