I remember that morning I wrote the paragraph that I have since expanded and made into a short story. I woke up early that morning, and I just remember that it was so quiet outside. Summers in New Hampshire were always noisy in the morning, between the birds and squirrels going berserk outside my bedroom window (at least it seemed that way at the time). It was a warm, balmy morning. I think it was June, maybe July. The night before a nasty thunderstorm raged outside. You'll notice I use the same words in the first few sentences.
I had this urge to write down words, because these pair of eyes just jumped out at me. It was still early enough that no one else but me and the family cat were up, so I pulled out my faithful laptop, and wrote what ended up being this incredibly poignant paragraph. It's more of an essay, I suppose. At the time, I was just writing this thing that popped into my head, and when it was finished, I was pleased with it.
I often went back and reread it, because it just struck a part of me.
I moved in October 2008, two or three months after writing it, to rural Oregon. There really wasn't much to do except sit in my room, watch TV, or wile away the hours on the Internet.
November 6, I was having my normal day of boredom, and I decided to read this essay/paragraph again. Out of nowhere, I am suddenly stricken to further this story. I get names and faces in my mind, and so I go with it. I spent eight or nine hours straight writing this story. The only breaks I took were for dinner, and to pick my youngest sister up from school. When I first finished it, it was 19/20 pages long. After I woke up November 7, I quickly ran through it, and cleaned it up. I couldn't let just my eyes go over it, so I sent a quick message out to this guy I had gone out with very briefly, who I knew was always open to my sending my writing to him. I sent out this story, very roughly edited, and I gave him no timeline to read it, since he had a job that demanded a lot of his time (and probably still does).
I got an email back from him around 5 PM Pacific Time (which would have been 8 PM EST), thanking me for giving him no timeline, since he was a busy guy. I replied back that he should take his time, I will be patient. I was clearly lying, because I was DYING to know what he thought, since he was honest about what he thought, and I trusted him.
No more than an hour later, I find another email from him. Thinking he's sent a duplicate message by accident (which had happened before), I thought nothing of it when I opened it. What I found inside made me giddy.
I just finished reading your story. I was hooked and ended up reading it straight through with only a short intermission. I CANNOT believe that you wrote that in only eight hours and edited it to perfection in only one hour! I thought it was incredible. You've got an amazing talent for writing and storytelling. This is also really improved over the last story you sent me in terms of cohesiveness and pacing, and having a clear plot line. Bravo! I can't tell you how impressed I am. I hope I'm not the only person you're gonna show this to, I think a lot of other people would really enjoy reading it too. OK, hopefully you'll get this tonight, it's not too late but I know you generally retire pretty early. Take care and keep up the good work,
Giddy is not the word I'd use to express what I felt right then and there. I was over-the-moon. I didn't harbor any romantic sentiment for this guy any more, but I could have kissed him if he'd been right there in front of me. The other story he speaks of is a horrid atrocity about two ex-friends forced to sleep in the same cabin, and end up falling in love. God, it was horrible. I sent him an email detailing how happy I was he liked it.
There's also a sequel, which is around 90 pages, by far the longest thing I have ever written. It needs severe tweaking, so I am working on it.
But Last Words and Moving On (tentative titles) are my babies, and the two pieces of my writing I am the most proud of, so I want everyone to read them and love them.
I might just post a preview of Moving On in the future, and see what response it garners. It might not be much, since only two people have left comments on this site.
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