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.
Cute little parable! Well done!