
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, December 19, 1994                   TAG: 9412200019
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MONTY S. LEITCH
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

MUSINGS

SOME YEARS ago, yellow lines were painted down the center of the road on which I travel most. It's still a secondary road, but now you can really tell when the fellow coming toward you is taking his half in the middle.

At least you could until last summer. Then, the road was patched. And in so haphazard a manner that the new patches sometimes cover one lane, sometimes two, sometimes neither; sometimes cover the yellow line completely, sometimes partially, and sometimes not at all.

I suppose this on-again, off-again asphalt was a cost-saving measure. I suppose the sale prices also explain why the yellow lines weren't repainted. However, the resultant driving experience now ranges from mildly distracting to downright hypnotic: Lines, no lines, lines, no lines, lines, no lines. At varying intervals.

I hadn't noticed quite how distracting this could be until last week, when we had one of our pea-soup fogs. Driving home after dark, I could see ahead of me, maybe, two car lengths. Not even as far as to the ends of my headlights' low beams, which seemed palpable columns of light.

I crept along - lines, no lines, lines, no lines - glad that I knew the road as well as I did. For in the no-lines spaces, the road seemed simply to disappear. ``Keep going,'' I chanted to comfort myself. ``You've been this way before.''

I've just finished another semester of trying to teach writing. Whatever reasons they give out loud, people really take writing classes because they think they'll find a teacher who can make it easy, a teacher who can tell them how to do it: Three Easy Steps of Writing! How To Write - A Never-Fail Method, Presented in 50 Words! Write This Way!

I know this is true, because it's the reason behind every class I ever took, and the reason for reading every how-to book I've ever read.

Bristly ol' Somerset Maugham had this to say about that: ``There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.''

The fact is, that despite the rules of grammar and spelling and all those little ``do's'' and ``don't's'' teachers will hold out to you, the only rule that always works is this: ``Just do it.''

Of course, that's not original with me. But as Mark Twain reminds us, ``Adam was the only man who, when he said a good thing, knew that nobody had said it before him.''

Sometimes, nevertheless, similes for the writing process can be instructive. Which is why I mention driving home in the fog.

Writing, even for the experienced writer, is like that. You have a pretty good idea of where you're going, and the road is familiar because you've done some writing before. But the end is not in sight. In fact, you can't even see what's just beyond your headlights, let alone around the next curve.

You might have a yellow line out in front to guide you. But then again, you might not. You just have to keep going forward anyway, cocooned in sound-damping fog, isolated, unsure, but faithful.

Keep your eyes moving. Look sometimes at the yellow lines, sometimes at the shoulder, sometimes at the column of light before you; because you'll need every detail to find and keep your place, every familiar landmark to get yourself where you're going.

But, if you're faithful, you will get there. Just keep driving.

And driving. And driving.

Monty S. Leitch is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist.

by CNB