Flat-Heeled

I'm sure there will be rapturous odes to the writing gods everywhere for National Writing Day. By way of contrast, I give you "how it really is" from one of my favorite writers, Lloyd Alexander, in his Horn Book essay, "The Flat-Heeled Muse."

On another occasion, I had planned to include a mysterious and menacing portent in the shape of a dark cloud. The Muse, an early riser, prodded me awake sometime well before dawn. 

"I've been meaning to speak with you about that cloud," she said. "You like it, don't you? You think it's dramatic. But I was wondering if this had occurred to you: you only want a few of your people to see the cloud, is that not correct? Yet you have already established a number of other characters in the vicinity who will see it, too. An event like that? They'll do nothing but talk about it for most of the story.  

Or," she purred, as she always does before she pounces, "did you have something like closed-circuit television in mind?" 

She clumped off in her sensible brogans while I flung myself from bed and ripped up all my work of the night before. The cloud was cut out.

The entire article was published as “The Flat-Heeled Muse, Horn Book Magazine, April 1965. I wish, wish, wish it was still clumping around online somewhere.  A bit more of it is here, at least.

Not a sensible brogue.