It Was Not Entirely Unexpected

It's a quiet day here in Vermont. The sun remains unconvinced that forcing its way through the clouds is worth the effort. It's cold in my apartment but I'm unwilling to turn up the heat. It seems so frivolous when I'm the only one here. I will have to make some tea shortly.

When last we spoke, I had a grand plan to write ALL DAY and squeeze the last few hours out of NaNoWriMo. Well, it didn't quite go as I had expected. It was a very painful writing day, with me mostly deleting than moving forward. I know that goes against the whole idea of NaNo, but I'm stuck on a pivotal scene which sets up the quest and the secondary character and several other stakes so it's got to be at least close to right before I can forge ahead.

However, that night when I got into bed, two short stories started playing through my head. This, I realized, is my characters "talking to me." It's really just me writing the story in my head and usually I'm too cold to get out of bed and do anything about it. In point of fact, I was still too cold. Husband got up and grabbed me a pen and pad of paper. Yes, I do know he spoils me. My mom reminds me of this every time I see her. We are AGAINST spoiling in my family.

One of the stories that popped into my head was new and somewhat bizarre but I'm having a lot of fun with it. It's a little Kelly Link-like, well, as much as my writing could every approach her unique and wonderful style.

This is the first line: "It was not entirely unexpected that Agnes would make a sword out of her own hair, given the circumstances."

The Moral of This Story (that being this blog post, not the short story of which I was just speaking), is that sometimes a hard writing day cracks you open to new things you never expected--even if those things take the better part of a day to filter through to you and tend to wait until you are warm and cozy in bed.