Bah.
Knowing that I needed a short story or bit of witty/insightful/appropriate banter for the blog on the 15th, I began seriously worrying about it on the 9th. Then Daylight Savings Time (DST) happened.
A few notes for people who don’t know me: I’m brain damaged. I don’t talk about it a lot and you wouldn’t know from looking at me, but among the many consequences I sleep badly. (I’m also supposed to be psychic, but the sleep part is eminently more important.) So when an hour of sleep was stolen from me on Sunday, my whole life fell apart. Most nights I wake up around three in the morning, and haunt my own house for an hour or two. I tend to write or edit, and then finally around five I return to bed for the last, desperately important three or so hours of sleep. So in bed from ten until three, then back to sleep from five until seven-thirty, that’s me. Unless it’s DST, in which case three am becomes four am, and there really isn’t much point in going back to bed at six when the alarm goes off at seven-thirty.
So this week, when I knew I needed a story for the blog or something, really anything, by Friday night, I wasn’t sleeping. At. All. I’m rubbish at creative things when I’m sleep deprived. Line editing, making sure continuity errors are repaired, sure I can do those things but coming up with a story from the air? No.
Ideas I began and discarded:
- A bridge where a car accident killed the parents of a small child becomes a local ghost story and urban legend. A teen is bullied into spending the night there only to discover the long ago dead parents are his own, and they’re rather proud of him.
- A space comedy inspired by Douglas Adams about aliens who collect things, including people, from planets just before their destroyed. (I actually have 2,349 words on this one, but the story doesn’t seem to make sense if you don’t know the rest of it… which only exists in my head.)
- A short story told in the third person, worked out perfectly in my head, which came to me just as I finally got to sleep. Unfortunately the only words written down are ‘you are’ followed by several looping swirls.
Desperate, I turned to the idea of a photo safari. I spent some time talking to locals in my town and checking the various abandoned and urban legend websites. There are three or four likely spots within an hour’s drive but my schedule makes a hash of it. The only time to go photo hunting is in between appointments and before a long planned dinner.
And thus, because I don’t want the 15th to go by without fresh content for you, today’s blog post is a picture of my rabbit editor, long may he reign.
(Actual short story or interesting/insightful blog passages will return by the 30th of March, if not sooner. I appreciate your patience in this the oh-so-trying first week of DST.)