What Happened?

At four-thirty this morning, something happened.

I became possessed of a scene, and nothing would do but to snatch open my laptop, review the couple paragraphs I wrote last September, and hammer away at a story I've been thinking about writing for years. Not just a story. A novel. One not associated with National Novel Writing Month, and so one not bound by the need to pump aimless word count into it.

For two hours I dragged words from somewhere and wrote them down.

After five novels, two anthologies of short related stories, and a host of other fiction, non-fiction and bullshit articles, you'd think writing would feel like an everyday occurrence. But this time was different. There were no deadlines, no challenges, no empty spaces in the Press that needed to be filled. It was just writing.

And when I couldn't stand the intensity of it any more, I crashed back into bed and slept without anxious nightmares for the first time in ages.

I told this to Bernie when he called on his break from work at 8:30 am, and his first words were, "Can I read it?" God, how flattering is that? He doesn't even know what it's about.

I don't recall him being that excited about my poetry ...