Three Portraits of a Writer

He writes as if composing a letter to a friend. Head bowed over his laptop, words drop like spring rain, silence but for the soft click of keys and the tick of the wall clock.

He appears to be a middle-aged man who’s forgotten his task. Pencil in hand hovers over the paper, his head is lifted, he stares off into middle space, listening, the story not yet in words, but coming, from that mysterious fold where ideas, inventions, and, imaginations are born.

The typed, printed manuscript lies before him. He attempts the impossible––to read the story as if he’s encountering it for the first time, to see it as a reader. He pencils edits––move this sentence to the top of the paragraph, delete that phrase, build the tension of this scene––working the draft, he hopes, to the benefit of a reader he’ll never meet.