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Eight pages of Merry. Seven pages of the next Anita.
But yesterday my second writing session was something I hadn’t done in years: a short story. I have seventeen pages of a brand new short story. Okay, novella, or is novelette? I can’t remember which is shorter by SFWA rules. Oh, Science Fiction Writers of America. Whichever is shorter is the one it’s going to be. I’d estimate around thirty pages. Maybe less?
The second writing session began as a way for my muse and I to play, then I started making real progress on the new Anita book. Not BLOOD NOIR, but like the newer, as in unfinished one. And you know me, once you get past fifty pages, then a hundred, I started getting goal oriented. I thought, cool, I’ll have this book well in hand when SWALLOWING DARKNESS is finished. But then, a strange thing happened, my muse and I had a falling out.
“You promised I could work on anything I ‘wanted’ to work on in the second session,” she reminded. She had a point. I’d made the second session just more work.
So Sunday, I let my muse play. I did two pages of one story, and it’s a great opening, but it’s not ready to be written, not quite. Then I sat down to my second short idea, and boy, was it ready to go. Seventeen pages in two hours, pretty darn good, even for me. I felt energized, and refreshed when I finished.
Sometimes work is work, but sometimes I remember a time when it was play. It’s good to remind myself what it was like when it was just my wish and my hobby.