What the Writer Left Behind

The desk, still scarred by the chaos from a category 5 brainstorm, tells us much about the writer.

Scrap paper wedged between crinkled pages in journals stacked on top of each other weaves together the family generations of a main character’s love interest. Judging by what the notes are written on, it seemed she worked a handful of jobs with spare slips of paper that she could jot ideas down without attracting attention in her down time. She’d be far from the only writer who inherited the family curse of poverty.

She found inspiration as she went. She’d been little more than a collection of ideas and aesthetics stitched into a trench coat.

In the modern age, post-typewriter, rough drafts are stored on hard drives. The ones on this desk may gather dust on the outside, but inside, folders upon folders within folders hold a library’s worth of organized stories that range from the length of a paragraph to an epic-style odyssey. USB drives keep safe the uploaded pictures of hand-drawn maps and commissioned character artwork. Screenplays copied and pasted from Final Draft onto documents, formatting errors still awaiting revision were pushed to the back. Simple computing programs ran old text files that prompted the user to respond and roleplay the story, one that can take winding pathways with possibilities that were up to the writer to number and lead the reader through.

Her favorite part. Asking “what if?” Taking a trope and turning it askew. Traditionally joyful moments are overshadowed by deep sorrow. Things that are worse than merciful death. Hearts born broken yearn for a completeness they can’t recognize.

Medical records were stuffed in a bottom drawer: the psych wards, the medications, the transcriptions and recommendations from doctors. Sticky notes with faded letters slipped out with reminders to take life one day at a time, to be grateful, to accept imperfection.

She wrote to find unity in the world around her and acceptance from those who understood the meaning of the word. She drew us in with the relatable then left us alone in a sudden darkness with only questions. 

The legacy of her work could have given the downtrodden the tools to break cycles of violence, of neglect, of abuse, of addiction. It could have disillusioned a generation.

If any of it was ever finished.

Fear wore down dreams year after year. They remained locked away in her mind, too delicate to be exposed to the eyes of the people who needed it most.

What the writer left behind, instead, was like a lighthouse that guided wayward ships that found themselves adrift in her dark sea. But the mariners would never see its inside, never meet the keeper that maintained such a vital structure. 

And so we can only look over the remains. The writer’s desk has become a tombstone, a memoriam and dedication to the fear of failing, the fear of succeeding, and the fear of letting something be what it is.