It’s 3:30 am and I meant to be in bed an hour ago. This is not an uncommon occurrence but still annoying. It’s been a meh day for me. I woke up feeling bent – this is my way of saying my arthritis was bad. I had to text my boss to tell her I wanted to start later. She’s always cool with this but it annoys me when I have to take advantage of it. I took an hour, slept for part of the time and then got moving (slowly) before getting to work. I opted not to make up my time.
This meant my brain was slow to work today. I made progress on tasks but I wanted to do super fast work. I couldn’t. I made a point of putting my computer aside for my lunch time. I knew I needed the break from it.
Because it was a rough day, I didn’t edit. My brain still felt sluggish and I didn’t think I had the bandwidth to give it the focus the editing needs. Instead, I talked with my sister and worked on a non-writing project.
Prepping for bed, my eyes were drooping and I felt worn out. When I turned everything off, I thought good I’ll be asleep in no time at all. Nope. That did not happen. I lay in the dark and heard this conversation.
Now I’ve signed up to write a bunch of short stories for different anthologies. I like writing short stories. They are quick writes and usually I can get them done in under a week. So I signed up for one and decided I could write in the Heart of Fire (short story I wrote several years ago) world and finish the story.
Earlier this week as I was getting writing things organized, I wrote a rough (vague) outline for this short story. I rarely do any planning or outlining so this was quite a thing for me. So I’m laying in the dark and I hear this conversation. I try to convince myself I can just remember it and get it down later… yeah I know. I laughed at the idea. So then I’m thinking – okay I’ll do talk to text and just email it to myself. But my phones been weird and I just want to get it written. I consider grabbing one of my rocket books but realize I’ll have to turn on the light. If I’m turning on the lights, I might as well open my computer.
So I did. Now I’ve got the first chapter done and I’ve written 1320 words. Now the short story needs to be 10,000 to 20,000 words. I’ve outlined 12 chapters so if I average 1500 words per chapter, I should be at about 18K when I’m done. We’ll see how that goes.
I like what I’ve written and I think I’ve gotten the snarky tone I want. I just need to make sure I write in first person present tense. That will be the hard part for me.
