Time & Perspective Quote by Lynn Abbey

Abbey’s line lands like a friendly slap on the wrist: you’re not a rugged scrivener battling the elements, you’re a modern writer manufacturing scarcity to excuse procrastination. The ribbon typewriter is a deliberately dusty relic, a symbol of an era when the physical limits of tools really did shape the pace and texture of drafting. By opening with that throwback, she punctures a certain romantic self-myth writers love: the idea that the struggle is somehow nobler when it’s mechanical, messy, and analog.

The pivot to the inkjet cartridge is where the quote does its real work. Ink is cheap compared to the cost of a compromised final draft, yet writers still treat “running low” like an act of fate. Abbey’s subtext is that we’ll reach for any friction - low ink, a missing cable, the “wrong” notebook - to delay the most vulnerable phase of the process: committing to decisions. Final draft is not the sandbox; it’s the contract. You’re not discovering the piece anymore, you’re taking responsibility for it.

There’s also a quiet jab at false economy. Trying to “wring a few more sheets” is penny-pinching disguised as practicality, but it actually signals misaligned priorities: saving a cartridge while spending your credibility. In a culture that fetishizes hacks and shortcuts, Abbey insists on a blunt ethic: when it’s time to finish, remove obstacles rather than curate them.