Reunited With An Old Friend

While I can't say I haven't been writing lately (because I have been regularly writing for my blog as well as contributing various non-fiction articles to The Mark News as well as industry magazines like Quill & Quire and Canadian Bookseller), I certainly haven't done much in the way of penning fiction.

Because, apart from a short story I co-write with my friend Kimberly Foottit for the Campus Chills anthology late last year, it has been a long time since I have crafted a short story.

And man does it feel good.

Here's how the recent reunion with my muse went: on Saturday night in the middle of a family dinner, Alexander made an offhand comment about his loose tooth. That comment sent my mind into one of the typical whirlwind spirals that occurs to me multiple times during the day. Most of those whirlwind spirals are the gist for inspiration for stories and most of them are lost with the winds and sands of time. But this time the call was so strong that I excused myself from the table and ran downstairs to quickly jot down the first couple of lines from a story that had immediately occurred to me.

Then, later in the evening, I made more notes and jotted down a few concepts for characters from the tale, and wrote a few paragraphs. Then I left the idea alone and let it just sit in the back of my mind while I did other things -- such as relaxing with my wife in front of a movie, reading a bit, then going to bed.

I got up early on Sunday morning and, refreshed, penned first half of the story. When my wife got back from her Sunday morning writing session I donned my own running gear and went out on a 3K run in the neighbourhood (I hadn't run outside since June 2009 -- most of the running I'd done over the winter had been on our basement treadmill).

The run seemed to have done the trick, allowing my mind (which WAS listening to an audiobook), just what it needed to continue to keep the plotline, characters and details in the back of my mind in order to properly sort out the rest of the story I was working on.

Because this morning I got up a little after 5 AM and finished the first draft of the story which runs about 2500 words.

It's not yet done, since I need to do a few edits and re-writes of the tale, but man did the creation of that story, right from inspiration through the completion of the first draft ever feel good.

It was like being reunited with my muse after a long absence.

Damn, I missed her.