Mike’s failed attempt to resume writing

Mike’s failed attempt to resume writing is a two-part reversal: on New Year’s Day 1998, the sense that his writer’s block has broken collapses as soon as he opens Word Six; in March, he returns to the program and chooses not to open it. The first encounter ends in a physical crisis and the conviction that his career may be over, while the second makes the loss newly personal, as the icon recalls Johanna and writing itself becomes something he would give anything to recover.

The New Year’s attempt

On the first morning of 1998, after a clear, cold, still, and beautiful dawn, Mike stands at his bedroom window with coffee and suddenly feels that he can write again. The change seems as self-evident as the directions of up and down: the new year has arrived, something has shifted, and the possibility of writing appears open to him. He goes to his study, sits at the computer, and starts it, apparently ready to test that conviction.

The test turns on a particular sequence of actions. Mike opens the main menu and selects Word Six, the word-processing program he once used for his work. Its pen-and-parchment logo appears, but the sight does not lead into writing. Instead, he is struck by a severe physical reaction and pushes back from the desk. His office-chair wheels catch on a small rug Johanna had found in the last year of her life, and he falls backward; the fall interrupts his view of the logo and blank screen. Mike later believes that, had he remained upright facing the screen, he might have choked to death.

After the episode, Mike manages to breathe and eventually regains full consciousness. He disinfects a cut, waits seated on the edge of the bathtub until he feels able to stand, and spends about fifteen minutes recovering. During that pause, the hoped-for return of his ability to write gives way to a bleak conclusion: barring a miracle, his writing career is finished. He imagines the distress of his agent, Harold Oblowski, and editor, Debra Weinstock, but sees no intervention that could make him write again. For the immediate future, he wants only to get through New Year’s Day.

The second encounter with Word Six

The failed New Year’s attempt does not end Mike’s interest in writing. In March, while using his Powerbook at the kitchen table, he opens the main menu and moves the cursor down toward the crossword puzzles, then past them to Word Six. The computer and program are now approached from a different setting: rather than sitting in his study to begin work, he is at the kitchen table, where he has been playing Scrabble against the computer and solving tournament-level crosswords.

This time, looking at the Word Six icon brings sadness and longing rather than the panic of the first attempt. Mike associates it with the photographs of Johanna that he keeps in his wallet: looking at those photographs, he sometimes wishes he could sell his immortal soul to have her back. Now he feels that same depth of desire toward writing, wishing he could give up his soul in exchange for being able to write a story again. The comparison makes the block more than a professional setback: the lost capacity is joined, in his imagination, to the bereavement that continues to shape his life.

A voice urges him to try, suggesting that things might have changed. Mike knows they have not. Instead of opening the program, he moves Word Six to the trash barrel in the lower-right corner of the screen and deletes it, bidding farewell to what he calls his old pal. The action is deliberate where the earlier attempt was involuntary: the first time, his body forces him away from the desk; the second time, he recognizes the unchanged condition and acts on that knowledge.

Significance and outcome

The two encounters trace the difference between hoping for recovery and acknowledging its absence. On New Year’s Day, Mike takes the arrival of 1998 as a sign that the obstruction has lifted, but the appearance of the program’s logo overturns that expectation before he can write. In March, the same icon no longer carries the promise of an immediate beginning. It becomes an object of grief and desire, and then something he consciously discards.

The episode establishes no lasting recovery: Mike’s conclusion that his career is over is tied to the condition as he understands it at that point, and his March decision confirms that he still cannot bring himself to write. Yet his longing remains active. He wants a story badly enough to imagine exchanging his soul for the ability to write one, and he tests the possibility again even after the New Year’s collapse. The failed attempts therefore preserve both sides of the impasse: writing remains inaccessible, but it has not ceased to matter to him.