Writing has been my release, my haven, and my hobby for forty years. I used to talk about being a professional writer, but I let that dream fly away in favor of a more responsible and stable profession. Now that dream has returned, and I do not plan on letting it escape again. But to become the writer I have always wanted to be, I must once again face off against my greatest enemy. It is not the only foe I must face down in my quest, but is the one that has tormented me the longest, the shrewd and silent beast that forever lies in wait, doing its part to prevent me from becoming a prolific author.
The backspace key.
It is an insidious villain, lurking in the corner of my keyboard, taunting me as I try furiously to keep my right pinkie away. It has long been my nemesis, that temptation to correct, to change, and to edit every word, to bring every sentence into perfect harmony with the others before I move on to the next. There have been times I forced myself to run from it, to get as far from my desk as I could just to avoid a single correction that I knew I did not need to make. But when I returned, that rectangular creature was waiting for me, pointing at my finger hanging in the air above it, telling me to just change one more thing before I move on.
I have deployed many tactics to defeat my archenemy. I have painted over the words so I could no longer read them. I have glued a tack to it, hoping that I could create a pain response to condition myself to ignore that single key. I have pried it from my keyboard, leaving only an amputated stump. But so artful, so treacherous is my enemy that no tactic has been able to defeat it. Always it teases, always it points, always it beckons me to edit anew, professing its disdain of the first draft.
It is only with time, with the experience of age, that I have been able to weaken my foe. I have trained and re-trained myself and found new weapons to utilize in my fight. I am confronted with the words First Draft in large red letters at the top and bottom of each page, a blatant reminder of my task. I have developed a writing strategy that helps propel me forward, one that addresses the times I most frequently succumb to the deceitful allure of that slender plastic succubus. And I have put time constraints and personal deadlines on each piece I write, forcing myself to keep moving forward; I must give my thanks to the people who organize and run NaNo Write Month for helping me develop these habits.
I have consigned myself to lessening the hold the backspace key has on me. I know it will never be vanquished because I will always, inevitably, need that silent, devious little key; just as surely, I know it needs me to validate its existence, to remove the extraneous, to simplify the verbose. In that cause, at least, we are united, though choosing when to strike against those unsightly errors will always remain a source of contention. We are joined at the pinkie, a tool that I must remind myself to use but not abuse. Working together, I hope, we can accomplish great things.