I’ve been working on a short story for a week or so, mostly doing research, although I made a first stab at what I thought was going to be the opening section, and in a sense will be, although somewhat modified.
Then, at about 1:30 this morning, I woke up knowing exactly how I was going to write the story and the voices of the characters involved. Afraid that all this inspiration might be gone come morning, I had to get out of bed and write myself a couple of pages of notes. The handwriting is shaky but legible, but I needn’t have feared: it was all still there this morning. Although, what’s to say that the act of writing it down wasn’t what helped me to remember it when I awoke. Inspiration like that is always nice; however, it would have been nicer if it had happened at 1:30 pm instead.
In any case, I had a very productive writing session this morning. Since I write by hand, I can’t say exactly how much I wrote, but it was nine Moleskine pages, so I’m guessing something around or a little over 2000 words. That’s a lot for me in one sitting (although I have done a lot more on rare occasion). The funny thing is that I’m not writing the story beginning to end—what I wrote this morning was the middle, in three sections, and the sections will probably end up in a different order than I wrote them. Now I have to write one more “middle” section, the beginning and the end. I know them, more or less, I just have to commit them to paper. Then it’ll be time to dictate the story into the computer and edit the crap out of it. That’s a technical writing term, by the way.
Hodder & Stoughton hasn’t yet revealed their cover art for the UK edition of Flight or Fright. They have a web page up for it, though. I received the final missing pieces for the manuscript, so now the book is in the proof-reading phase. All very exciting!
