My writing is ethereal. I don’t mean heavenly, I mean that instead of existing in reality, it exists on laptops and flat-screen monitors, Google phones and iPads. Pixels on screens bringing my words to you. So it has been, and so it continues to be.

Until now. Responding to some requests, I have emailed the text of my (as of yet unproduced) play to friends and relatives. I send the copies as PDFs, with the assumption that those kind enough to read the play will peruse it on whatever screen is at the nearest at whatever time is convenient.

But one friend pushed that little print icon on her screen (intentionally, I hope) and was soon swamped by 90 pages of my words, or rather the words of the half-dozen characters in my prison-life drama. She read and enjoyed and told me so.

I wasn’t home when she brought the pages to our house yesterday, so she left them with a request that I sign the cover page and return it to her. And I plan to do that. But not until I have spent time enjoying the pleasure of seeing my work in print.

I know I could have printed a copy at any time, just as I could have printed out any of my blogs. But I never have. I never saw the need to. But now seeing my work in print–even in this informal copy–changes my outlook on the play and on myself. It compares to when I was introduced to someone in the neighborhood and she said “I know your name, you’re the writer.”

If I can get this far I can go further. It may be with the current play, it may be with something else that I choose to write, or publish, or produce. I’ve got lots of time ahead of me, and a keyboard that calls to me.

And this time around, I may use the printer, too!

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