She studied the elderly gentleman, pecking his keyboard as patiently as a hen finding her dinner from the grass beneath her. In one fluid motion, he yanked the paper from the roller, basketed it with one hand into the wicker basket, got up from his chair and stretched in front of the window, irritation set in his shoulders.
"Why do you let it get you so upset? Why don't you just type away, get the words down and worry about changing it later? You're just writing a rough draft..."
The etch in his brow was deep so that it nearly knit two into one. "You don't just "type away."" The words tripped in his throat and he coughed on the flem that came up with his disgust. "Typing away... anyone can do that... you'll never be a great writer... You didn't come here to be Anyone. You came here to learn how to be a great writer, you said, to learn from me! And I'm telling you, you have to write from your Truth and writing from your truth isn't always easy. It doesn't, that word you young people say, "flow." Sometimes it means writing the same sentence over and over again until you've got it... Perfect, the way you want it." He gathered himself up and marched out of the sunlit room his disgust still articulated in my hearing "young people... write from truth... not about rules about writing, words on the page... about Truth."
I stood back watching as the door slowly closed, leaving me alone with the echo of his relicked ideals...
My truth?
