Waste of Paper
The paper had mounted up around the wastepaper basket over the hours. Michelle tore yet another sheet of her pad and crumpled it up into the smallest of balls. She pressed the paper between her fists until her knuckles went white and the paper cut into her skin. Once the ball had been compressed as tight as she could, she threw it toward the bin. The ball bounced a couple of times before falling on the floor beside several other pieces
Michelle had written three dissertations and countless essays, none of which had been as brutal as this. She stared at the white paper; it appeared to mock her as she tried to find an opening line that did the subject justice. A line came to her, and she scratched it into the paper. The sound soothed her nerves as the pencil flew across the page. She looked down at the line.
No, it was like something she had written before, but that line had been better. Stumbling to the waste paper bin, she tipped all the little balls onto the floor in front of her. Leaning against the wall, she went through the painstaking task of smoothing out the paper. Running the palms of her hands over the paper a couple of times to make it flat. After the pile had been stacked on her knees, she went through them, looking for her missing line one at a time.
She found it three-quarters of the way through. Still, it could have been worse. It could have been the last page. She placed the missing line beside her and went through the same ritual of crumbling the pages back into tight balls. This time, she placed them all in the waste paper basket. Taking the saved piece of paper to her desk, she altered the line on the pad to this one.
Again, she carried on writing, scratching her thoughts across the page. She had always written in pencil for as long as she could remember. The feel of the shiny wood in her hand. The way the lead scratched the words into the paper. She could flip the pencil over, erasing it when she made a mistake. She brushed the rubbings off, creating a little mountain of blue shavings beside her pad. Later, when she finished, she would bring the waste paper basket over and sweep it on top of the balls of paper.
Halfway down the page, she looked at the following line. No, she had written something similar before. Returning to the waste paper basket, she went through the same ritual with the paper. This time, she found the missing line a third of the way through the pile.
Michelle rubbed her eyes and massaged her neck with her left hand. She felt the muscles relax as she squeezed them. She had been sitting over this paper for six hours, trying to write the most important speech of her life. So far, she had managed one page, and that was okay. Several friends had told her they could find someone to write this for her. She was adamant that this should be all her own work. It wasn’t every day you became the first female president of the USA.
Due to the latest Presidential debate and UK election, I thought it was worth resurrecting this storyand giving it a polish and a new audience.