What’s old is killing me, so I need something new. A new direction… or at least a new directive. Jen has put out a call, thrown the proverbial gauntlet, so what do we think of this as a fictive start… A character named Ellen.


Ellen had emerged from a Midwest stew pot of the liberal arts, hell bent on getting paid for the folly of a well-rounded education. Her knowledge base was largely deemed irrelevant by all prospective headhunters, but the skills she amassed getting it were just what the doctor had ordered.

What do we really know about Ellen, what concerns her, and the blue ice that might fall from the flush toilet of a passing plane, to entangle her in misadventure? Is the universe at stake, a nation, or just one person? Has something been stolen or found? We know that Ellen was once the world’s fastest typist; that thoughts could emerge from her fingers mere nanoseconds from their first appearance on her tabula rasa. However, she has long since burned up her fascia with corporate minutia, letters, faxes, training manuals and the like – the dictated ramblings of the wealthy and powerful typed at superhuman speeds and leaving tiny tares and scarring on the inner lining of her tendon’s sheathing. Now the one thing she can’t do is type. Her fast typing fortune squandered on specialists, she is forced to wander like Qui Chang Kane.

As our greatest strength can often become our greatest weakness Ellen is cursed with the curse of non-repeating – the more spontaneous her motion the less her pain. The more she repeats a task, from folding laundry to operating a drill press, the greater she suffers; until her arms hang limp at her sides, useless. Her nemesis is an abstraction: habit.

Does it have hook? Do we now have an image of Ellen? Do we care what might befall this lugubrious lass? Can the most habituated man alive take on such a spontaneous critter as Ellen must needs be? Comments please (or should I throw this one back try something else)?