A minor miracle

happened to me today. I am a fog walker when I write - I have no idea what's going to happen in the next sentence, let alone the next paragraph or, gods forbid, the ending. So I write a sentence and then carry on, carefully stepping into the fog as it curls around me, obscuring everything except the words I'm writing at each moment.

But that does make my life slightly more complicated. I'm working on a proposal for a three book trilogy which meant I had to at least write down what was going to happen in a very vague way. So I've done that and now I'm going to get started on the book. But I can't. It's very frustrating because usually writing is easy and entertaining for me - but not today.

Because almost every book begins for me with a sentence or a phrase - that sentence or phrase comes to me and away I go, chasing after it all the way through the fog right to the end of the manuscript. Today, though, because I knew what needed to happen at the beginning of the book I couldn't write it - no first sentence or phrase (none of that little piece of magic that starts the book for me) so no writing.

I sat at the computer, I sat in my favorite chair, I paced, I pretended I knew what I was doing. Finally I gave up and decided to take a walk on the beach where I often get inspiration. Instead, I fell asleep on my couch this afternoon and when I woke up - it was there. I sat down and in five minutes wrote the first two pages.

Like I said, a minor miracle!

Kate