Upon Becoming a Goblin

Now in this group, there was a writer of little patience. And she had demonstrated her lack of patience by taking her few rejections hard and shutting the gates down around her writing enclosure and locking the door with a heavy padlock. Having shut the gates and locked them with the padlock she proceeded to cry out among the streets that she had been a writer, but had come upon some hard times and her writing enclosure was barred against her.
The other scribes heard this cry, but they withdrew further into their own enclosures and continued to write. Some received rejections, some received acceptances, but none shuttered their gates, nor padlocked their doors. Still, the writer of little patience continued to roam the streets and talk about stories that vanished into the pages of notebooks, half-written. Glittering landscapes arose before her and melted in the distance and she wished for a notebook in which to record them, but she had none. She cursed that all of her notebooks and writing implements were locked away in her writing enclosure, padlocked against her use.
At this point, one of the other scribes who had been writing a lengthy parable on the turtle who sleeps safe through the dry winter decided to toss the spent reeds from this endeavor into the street, where they would degrade in a natural fashion and return to the dust from which all written things come and go. These reeds were sharp and cracked and this scribe lived several stories up.
Below this scribe’s window, the writer of little patience was reclined in the shade, having tired of bemoaning her fate and, having given in to a further indulgence of laziness, was watching the activity on the street, which was like unto a reality show.
As the writer of little patience twirled the key to her writing enclosure on its chain and watched people walk by, she was pierced by a battery of old reeds that fell from the sky and pinned her where she lay. The writer of the parable of the turtle thus became the first writer to gain fame as a writer whose effort defeated a goblin of despair and laziness.
As to who wrote that fairy tale or whether the lazy writer of little patience did indeed become a goblin after being pierced by the reeds…well, I can’t really say. Laziness and impatience are scarcely the path to success, so why not the path to goblinhood?

Chrissa (who had better start writing again or who will be well on her way to goblinhood...)