The curse? Life. Or rather those things that life brings to derail the progress we writers crave.It's worse than our muses taking a month-long vacation in the tropics while we sit at our desks devoid of the creative sparks that propel our fingers into a furious frenzy of typing.
It's worse than spending weeks polishing dry prose into vibrant excitement while our still unwritten tales slip deeper into the recesses of our minds, waiting.
It's worse than air-starved lungs attempting to breathe fresh, unique life into cardboard characters that stubbornly refuse to be defined by their creators.
It's a nasty little curse, for sure. And those of us not named J. K. Rowling or Stephen King must endure it. There are no charms to protect us from it, no voodoo timepieces into which we can poke needles, no incantations we can utter that will dispel it, and no silver bullets with which we can terminate it. It envelopes us like the very air we breathe.
It's the lawn that needs mowing, the empty cupboards and refrigerator that needs filling, kids that need a ride to soccer practice, and the office from 9-5 with nights and weekends on call. Relatives and obligations, unplanned errands and unexpected guests, they're all part of the curse. It strikes without warning. It strikes without mercy.
Never enough time. Squeeze a minute as hard as you can and you'll wring not another single second from it. Whether time is relative or absolute doesn't matter. Sixty minutes is all you're going to get from an hour. There is no more.
I've heard some say that if you want time, make time. Alas, my talent for making time ranks right up there with my talent for growing younger. Oh, what I wouldn't give for a time machine. Drop in a few quarters, pull a lever and out pops an hour. That would be better than chocolate!
But alas, we can't make time. We can't buy it either. We can only use wisely the time we're given. That, and nothing else, offsets the power of the time-starved writer's curse.
