Amy Sue Nathan

A story and a silver lining

I woke up yesterday with a grand plan. Don’t you love those?  I was going to read and write and hang out in whatever order suited me best.  I took coffee to bed and pulled up the covers under my neck.  It was still dark out so I turned on a flashlight that I laid across my chest so it illuminated a page at a time. Nothing worse than holding a book and a flashlight at 6 am when you’re trying to drink coffee and read a novel.

While I was reading I had a thought.  Always dangerous.  It was a character and a short scene.  I did think to myself “that’s a good one” and then I went back to reading.  I soon realized that it was on automatic replay in my head and I’d read the same sentence in the book four or five times.  I got up, grabbed a notebook and pen and wrote the scene so I wouldn’t forget it.  Then without thinking I hand wrote about seven pages.  I’m not sure I took a breath, and I have no idea where it came from.  I do know that I needed Spanish words for this bit of story so when I finally extricated myself from the bed and transcribed the story onto the laptop, I tapped my friend in Mexico for the right words for these characters.  I then spent the next several hours writing about 2500 words over which I had no real control – the story unearthed itself as it appeared on the screen which is both exciting and unsettling.  I have no idea if there is more – as it doesn’t end – or if the whole story exists on the pages and it needs to be rearranged in order to see it.  Either way, it’s not my WIP which was my intended day’s work. I learned a long time ago that plans change, yet I am constantly surprised when they do.

But at least all those people and their problems are now living in a Word Doc instead of behind the brain door they tumbled out of yesterday.  I’m thinking it was mighty crowded in there.  It’s a whole city block worth of people!  They’re now residents of the New Idea file — along with other wayward souls and cities and towns and problems and relationships.

And as much as I complain about the town I live in (and I do!) — I think if I lived somewhere with more to do — these folks would all stay hidden away because I’d be too busy.

And that is today’s silver lining for living in the suburbs.