Dreaming

Yesterday morning Dave went out for the day at 6 a.m. leaving me drinking my first mug of Yorkshire tea. My sister was ringing to tell me something specific at 11 a.m. and I had to go out soon after 12 to a memorial service, but for five delicious hours I had an empty house in which I knew I could write undisturbed. After what seems like weeks of busyness, it was luxury, it was heaven. I was suffused with such a deep feeling of liberty and relief I can't express it in words. 

I submerged myself in my story and in the thoughts and conversation of my characters and I wrote some good stuff. Sometimes you just write, knowing it's what writers call 'a shitty first draft' that will be rewritten later, and sometimes you get to the heart of something the first time you try. Yesterday was one of those days. 

I was still in this ethereal fictional world when I stopped writing and got out the butter, cocoa and icing sugar to ice a cake for the afternoon's wake, when my sister rang. I took on board the key information she wanted to tell me but then she expanded into travel arrangements and speculation and negotiations needed and I was bamboozled. I couldn't focus. My rational brain was AWOL. 

My writer friend Chrissie picked me (and my cake) up in the car to go to the service and I told her about what had happened, and she understood completely. The same thing happens to her. 

Dave is planning to go out again for the day next Thursday and I have written in my diary in large orange capitals 

KEEP FREE