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Years ago I remember the first act of creation. No, not my own origin in the backseat of a Chevrolet, but rather the act of creating a story out of words.

It was Jr. High, the Halloween story contest: I can add up my life's accomplishments on two hands, but darn it, I won that story contest two years running- a record at St. Podunk Middle School.

But that first story was TORTURE. Gone the lackadaisacal days of composing kitten poems off the cuff on my step-father's typewriter, usher in a new world of editing, planning and forethought. Word striving, frustration; what is the word? I can't think of ..errgh, it's right there, right there-

"Alissa, don't pick your head."

What?

I come back from the depths of my inner mind to stare at my mother. She is regarding me with a gently criticizing expression. "Your forehead. You'll get a scar if you pick at it."

"Pick at what?"

"The pimple."

"Oh my God"

I notice my posture for the first time. I've been huddled over my notebook like Dr. Jekyll, one elbow crooked, the pencil held aloft in mid air while my other hand works around my forehead, alternately cradling it and fidgeting, poking at the little spot of irritation in the dead center.

Thanks, mom.

"Geeze, I'm tryin' to think here."

"Well, don't ruin your complexion doing it. If you pick at it, it won't heal. Is your story really worth having a scar in the middle of your forehead?"

Maybe.

"No."

"Okay then."

I go back to my draft, but it's like a tasmanian devil has suddenly died on the table. I thought it was a horrible beast before, wrestling it, trying to make it behave, but at least it was alive. Now it's just words in a heap. I want to knock it off the table and kick it across the floor. I leave it lying there and go up to turn on loud music in my room, something to dissipate this awful, angry frustration.

Later that same night I'm looking at the thing again. Just looking. It's still dead, but now I can bear to study it, at least. I read through what I've written with the engaged detachment of a scientist conducting an autopsy. No spark ignites. I'm utterly divorced from the thing, until I notice a language error, a flow problem. This bugs me. I start to work the sentence, moving it this way and that, and it gives. I start to write a little more, and a little.. it's coming now

"Alissa!"

"What?!?!" (I'm furious.)

"You're doing it again! DON'T pick at your head!"

"OH MY GOD! How am I supposed to WRITE this thing if you TALK to me?"

My mom gives me the same look of hurt confusion that friends,

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