Letter From The Front - Feb. 11, 2005

Dear Mom:

Sorry I haven't written in a while...It doesn't mean things are going badly. In fact, things have actually been going quite well on the writing front.

Our literary forces are marching right though the middle column of the enemy's forces. Although we started out a little short-handed of equipment and ammo -- the enemy caught us pretty flat-footed at first, and it got downright scary at times -- the supply ships must have arrived, because we've been firing nouns, prepositions and adjectives without interruption for a few days now. We've been slaying unwritten words right and left.

Of course, they're not telling us their casualty counts, but we're keeping our own score, best as we can determine. Our commander last night told us that, so far, we have killed as many as 26,459 unwritten words. Intelligence reports say the remaining forces number only a little over 23,000. We're more than halfway to overcoming all the opposition! Our commander says if the war keeps going as well as it is, we could mop up this mess by the end of next week and be home early. That would mean I would be home in time for us to celebrate Washington's Birthday together on the 21st! (I can't imagine not being home for that...the family readings of the Federalist Papers, the turkey dinner, the ritual chopping down of the apple tree...I can't wait!)

Unfortunately, I won't be home in time to spend Valentine's Day with my darling fiancee. I haven't even been writing to her. She's a strong, valiant woman, but the truth is, I can't bear to share with her the brutality I'm witnessing out here. When I look at the paragraphs strewn across the pages and the staccato dialogue being shouted back in forth in the middle of this messy, chaotic storyline, well I just...I don't want expose her soft, feminine constitution to that.

What's that saying, Warriors know the preciousness of freedom in a way civilians never will? Writing is glorified all the time. People read Stephen King or Tom Clancy and dream about being novelists, strutting through town with sunglasses and a pair of six-shooters. But let me tell you, this is nothing but a messy, ugly, dirty business. You look around and all you see is hanging prepositions, misspellings, characters flattened into pancakes by falling Muses. If I had a nickel for every time Microsoft Word fired green tracers of grammar correction at my sentences and phrases, I'd be a rich man.

Sometimes I wonder what I'm doing fighting this war, risking my life and being away from my true love for Valentine's Day, all for some silly story about two imaginary people living in Seattle.

God, I love my woman; she knows I can fight this fight and cheers me on. And when I come home she admires me and wants to hear the whole dramatic story, from beginning to end. She's a great supporter, but I just want to get this cockfight over with and go home. I'm not scared, Mom, understand, I just got other good things waiting for me, you know?

Well, as I said, the good news is that the war is going well. Our commanders have devised a new tactic which seems to be working wonders. They call it the "thirty-minute raid." Basically we get all ammo'd up, huddle in a circle, and on a particular signal, the sergeant yells, "GO!" Then we all storm out of our foxhole, run maniacally across the battlefield, ripping words out of our machine guns just as fast as they will go. We wreak as much havoc as we can for thirty minutes, then we dive back into the foxhole to safety. As I said, the tactic is working wonders. We've killed way more of the enemy in the last few days since we started doing it, than it took us days to kill before. And the good thing is that, under the adrenaline rush of those insane thirty minutes, it's over before you know it and you were too juiced to even notice you were scared the whole time. We run these raids two or three times a day, and we're just mowing the enemy down.

Well, don't want to say much more about it, lest I give away national secrets.

Gotta go now. Sarge is telling us we need to shine our keyboards and polish up our thesauri before the next raid.

Wish me luck. I'll be home before you know it!

Love,
Your boy