The Blinking Cursor

Divinity, or Doom?

Whenever I sit to write, I try not to think about the cursor over much. It’s a part of the settings within an operating system. It’s meant to be there like everything else: icons, background colors, graphics, for me the voice of JAWS, and the enlarged features of the screen due to my visual impairment.

What’s really interesting is that my cursor is probably larger than the average cursor, as I had to use the Ease of Access properties within my courteous operating system in order to be able to even see the damn thing.  Did you know you can all but make your cursor disappear?

Hum, I can hear the wheels in some of your heads turning.  Make the cursor go away, you think. That damnable beast, always rhythmically blinking at time.  The one-eyed monster that has nothing to do with a double entendre, but you’re willing to stand by the pun now that you’ve noticed it.  Yep, the idea of making it disappear forever is rolling through your mind, and you’re pondering bringing about an end to its insidious blinking. But beware, my friend, there is an even more insidious foe.  The blank screen. I wonder which is worse: an avaricious blinking cursor, or the blank page that sucks the marrow from your bones and uses your cured skin as a napkin.

Oh, so many of us think of the blank screen as a foe and the cursor that flashes at us like a streaker doing his last pass through the streets for the night, as our nemesis. I get it, I really do.  But is it doom?  Or, is it divinity?  A lot of you would say that you pray for divine intervention when you sit down to look at the screen. Some of you may even praise the cursor for at least being something on the page. If only it would stop, winking at you like some lame guy trying to get into your pants, ugh.

The thing is that you as the writer have a little control over how you feel about these two adversaries. I remember a time when I used to sit down at the computer and just stare at the cursor. I hated that thing. It mocked me. Sometimes, I could hear a kind of mechanical maniacal laughter playing with each flash. The clock on the wall at the time that did this consistent play of tick, tock, in the background accompanied the cursor in its sarcastic laughter at my expense. Oh, yes, I completely anthropomorphized the cursor. I was borderline insane and getting worse, as things didn’t go my way. I started to wonder if there was a little guy in the computer sending subliminal messages my way that kept me from writing. There were times I’d walk into my office with every intention of writing, then, I’d take one look at my screen and walk out again. It was as if something whispered, “naw, you don’t need to work today.” Yep, I had issues.

All jokes aside and departing from sarcasm and exaggerations, the truth is that I had a love hate relationship with my equipment.

Let’s not even talk about the times my computer crashed and ate my novel.  Oh, let’s not talk about the time I lost a full series of novellas because my computer decided it was done with me. Now, we can all say that I’m being bratty and over dramatizing what has happened to me over the years when using computers to write and store my work. But until you’ve had more than a sentence or paragraph disappear on you into the ether of your computer’s hard drive never to surface again, you won’t fully appreciate my sarcastic disgust with Windows and those who created it.

Then, there’s the cursor. I wanted to cry every time I saw it for the longest time. I felt like deleting the cursor until I started to lose my vision and learned how a blank screen seems more intimidating to me than one with a blinking cursor.

Nowadays, I tend to think of the cursor as a friendly reminder to get started. A lot of writers give the advice of adopting a, “butt in chair” motto, but you can sit in the chair at your desk all day and never write a word.  Trust me, I’ve managed it.

I’ll read through a research book and find it vastly fascinating. I’ll start looking for synonyms for a word that just didn’t seem to fit in the sentence I left off on during my last writing session. Or, just for kicks and to learn. Of course, I have every intention of learning. I’ll sit down and read articles on writing. Hey, I’m working, I justify. I’m learning about writing. I’m researching a very important part of the plot within my novel. Or, I’m not procrastinating, I’m making sure I’m using the word correctly. But I’ll sit at my desk for hours staring at the thesaurus finding word after word that either doesn’t work or leads to a more fascinating search.

The cursor does its job, though.  I see my half an inch cursor blinking at me, and all I can think is I have to stop it from doing that. It’s really getting on my nerves.  Why did I make it large enough for me to see, again?  I often ask myself this question when I don’t feel like writing. Yes, I’m a writer that occasionally doesn’t feel up to it. By the way, I’m also human. So, I start every session with a blank screen and a cursor flashing its wears at me and whispering a siren song that has nothing to do with death or doom. It sings a song of divinity for me, as it beckons me closer, pulls my spirit nearer, pulling from me a language and litany I didn’t know I possessed. It seduces and charms a story forth from my fingertips, and lovingly caresses them onto the screen, coaxing more and more from me. There is no longer a maniacal laugh when I sit before it. The wink it gives me is more conspiratorial than mocking. The wink says to me, “come let’s share a secret that only you and I will know until we decide to share it.” We share a love affair, we dream together, and with one look we’ve fallen in love. The cursor and I share a partnership of sorts where we team up on the characters to get our way, where we laugh maniacally when we cause mischief and mayhem in some unsuspecting character’s world, and call it a day or a night, so we can rest for the next round of dancing we intend to absorb ourselves in with one another.

Till next we meet, give your cursor the benefit of the doubt, stay well, and keep creating!

CSA

E-mail: csa30@icloud.com

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