Landfill

It would be interesting (scary) to know how many trees we've collectively killed on works that go nowhere. A totally depressing thought, but unavoidable. Pages and pages and pages, I would bet. Boxes and crates full; drawers, filing cabinets and cubbyholes stuffed with our best intentions, hopeful doodlings, plotted purgings...

By "we" I mean all writers past and present. An arboreal catastrophe of cataclysmic proportion, all that paper. So many trees, that much more global warming.

How many degrees Celsius for wanton effort?

So what if we just stopped--what if we completely quit practising on paper?

It's very hard to doodle onscreen. Harder to stuff a hard drive in a sock drawer. (And they say the stuff in cyberspace is virtually indestructible--which means the mistakes, the miscues, the misbegotten and the nakedly unwanted can keep coming back to haunt us.)

When our mistakes and misbegotten and misplaced efforts are often the stubborn if saggy box-springs for cushier moments: the times when words rest easy.

Triumph through try-and-try again failure.

Sharpen your axes, good buddies. Once the snow melts we'll plant seedlings, like the good reforesters we truly are.