Night, and Her Train of Plot Bunnies...

In a completely desperate move, I knocked myself out with sleeping pills last night. I hate them, so the scrip usually expires before I use them all. But in my drug-induced sleep, I had one of those really weird dreams that's part memory, and woke up remembering this novella I'd written on a retreat weekend back in my college days. My memory is vague on the process. I believe I tapped out most of it on an Alphasmart under a flowering chestnut tree in Scotland... but it would have been around 1992-1994, so that seems unlikely.

Crawling out of bed, I took a wild shot.

I'll be damned.

Crammed between some old term papers I refuse to throw away was a red folder with a label too worn to read. Opening it, I found the story I'd dreamed about. The title is ESCAPING HOME. I had no memory of it prior to the dream last night, and only a sketchy memory of it even as I opened the folder. Basically I knew it was a young adult novella about an abused girl who leaves home, lives on her own, but is forced from one place to the next through a series of tragedies. The only constant in her life is a desire to escape poverty and cruelty and to somehow attain an education.

But there it was... complete an nearly pristine inside a ratty red folder. Since I am trying very hard to get back on track with NaNoWriMo I have no time to give this story. Still... it has earned some love. So next year, when I get a small gap, I'll be paying some sucker to type it into a word file, and will give it a home via CreateSpace. Survivors should always stick together.

P.S. Art nerds got the title. :)

On Sabbatical

Last week knocked the Mickey right out of me. I admit it. I had appointments in ten directions, was barely recovered from the week-long IVIG crap, and then had a charity luncheon I was dreading. Turns out the luncheon, while fraught with ugly behavior from some, was actually the lead-in to a rather lovely dinner with good friends.

But I'm still completely bushed. So this week I am taking a medically-recommended and Ahmedically-demanded sabbatical. I'm not fighting it, either. I'm embracing it. Not running off to Maine. Not heading to Cambridge, either. I'm parking my ass in Green Harbor with my netbook and writing, sleeping, writing some more, sleeping, and possibly writing... or sleeping.

I'll be dodging the internet as much as possible so that I waste as little time as possible. I'll miss my pals from the interwebs. Probably take a few cheat-peeks. But I'll mostly be writing and sleeping.

See ya!