The Lamp

Every time Alice tries to write something like Hemingway, her desk lamp flickers. When she tries to engineer a Woolf-like stream of consciousness, it dims to barely nothing. After contriving more of a contemporary minimalist style, the lamp cuts out completely.

One night, exhausted from a day of pulling weeds and trimming shrubs, she slumps at the desk and writes a letter to her childhood self about treehouses, grass-stained knees and making mud pies.

Suddenly the lamp shines brilliantly, like a star.

She looks up at it, bemused. "You knew all along, didn't you?"

The bulb flashes once for yes.