Don't tell my wife but every day I have a relationship with another woman. Like most extramarital relationships it is only one dimensional; for me, a man, it is to satisfy a need, for her…I don't really know what she gets out of it.

There is a game I play with Microsoft WORD. Even though it is a computer program I have assigned personalities to many of the assist functions. There is not a more defined personality within my computer than the prim and proper, ex-college English professor, Ms. Fragment (better known as Ms. ‘Fragment Consider Revising').

It is adversarial at best, dare I say symbiotic, but in the end she almost always wins, which means I almost always lose. But I always come back for more. She is older, wiser and relentless in her opinion.

We never talk. It is I who must prompt any dialogue, every time I write something that she doesn't agree with. She most always replies the same way, "Fragmented Consider Revising". That's it. What does that really mean? It is so vague, so cerebral and so cold. I thought we meant something more to each other.

She will not ever offer any suggestions. "Okay, so what is fragmented about it?" No response, only silence? "Did you not like the verb I used, or its tense?" Nothing! It's like she wants me to figure it out for myself. After a multiple of changes, I know she approves when she no longer responds. She never offers rewards for finally getting it right, only silence.

I mean if someone came up to you while you were talking and interrupted you by saying "Fragmented Consider Reviving," how would that make you feel? And if you were able to remain calm and ask, "What do you mean by that precisely," they only repeat, "Fragmented Consider Reviving." No matter what you ask, they repeat the same. They continue until you restructure your original phrase to their liking. You know they finally like it when they no longer say anything.

That's how she makes me feel.

I don't always agree with her either. I've got to tell you, there are many times I changed it and she gives her okay by removing that obnoxious green, squiggly line defacing my creation to be, but I still don't like it. She has given her approval, but I think she is wrong. Just because she says it is correct that doesn't mean it is good. So what value is a tool that tells you right from wrong when you don't always agree when they tell you it is right?

But heck, it could all be my fault. I'm not her type. She belongs with someone who thinks like she does. We have so little in common. She is a ‘Linear' and I am a ‘Sequential'. How could the two possibly ever be happy together?

See, every Storyteller/Writer exists within their unique individual style. We all use this style as part of a convoluted exercise of translating a tickle in our neurons into a fabrication of something that conveys meaning to someone we don't know, and who probably doesn't agree with us anyways. Such is the fluid role of the Storyteller, with all the frustration, pain and brief glimpses of pleasure it brings.

We do it not because we glean any net gain, but because we fear a net loss it we don't.

In the Storyteller's style exists a polarity of two different camps: Linear writers and Sequential writers. Since I abstain from ever calling myself a writer, I can slip around the two anytime I want, consistent with my typical flip-flopping approach to everything. Though, in truth I am really a Sequential kind of guy.

Now if you are too, you know how awkward it is to develop continuity in a Sequential fashion. Linear writers have the advantage of pretty much thinking a progression of thoughts (A,B,C) and recording them the same (A,B,C).

Such is a luxury for Sequential folks. We are destined to toil in crafting a story from the mud of confusing, unrelated ideas and contrasting nuances in order to attain something of storied substance in the end.

In the early stages of writing, the Sequential form is alien to most properly educated readers, like Ms. Fragment. But layer by layer, detail by detail, from drips, to globs, then shapes and hopefully, a story emerges like the Phoenix.

But none of these excuses means a dang to Ms. Fragment. She is there to assure rightness prevails and does so at the expense of my wrongness.

She makes it clear how she wants to conduct our relationship. I am sure she is capable of love, even friendship but her card must be full because there is no chance our collaboration can ever evolve to anything other than a cold, steely working rapport.

If I called her and left a message after hours, or wrote her a friendly e-mail wishing her happy birthday, she would never answer. It is what it is.

In the many years I have interacted with computers, and marveled at what brilliant tools they have become, there has always been something missing in the technology. I have always longed for a function key that auto corrects from what I said, to what I meant to say… I am still waiting.

Then I could be happy and finally break off this thing between me and Ms. Fragment.

See, that would allow more time for more folks to write and be creative without the hassle of being creative.

But then…?