“That’s Nice”

Nov 26, 2009 Daily Writing, Short Stories

LISTENING TO:
Joan Baez – “Ring Them Bells”

After a brief bit of derailment, I’m back to writing a new short story.

I keep thinking I should be plugging full-bore on the novel, but I’ve had two ideas clashing around in my head for a week now and they’ve come together the past two days. It’s a strange story for me. Once I understand a story, I can usually just kind of drop it down and make it work. This one, though, has been elusive. I know the characters pretty well, and I know the basic story. But I’ve spent two days thinking about it in quiet times, looking for the right perspective from which to tell it.

I had four different starts and was unhappy with them all.

Then this morning I got on a fresh vein.

I started this morning by writing another false start, which was kind of a bummer. But then, reading back over it, I picked up a sentence in the middle. It was simple little sentence. I put it on a line by itself and just kind of looked at it. Yes, I thought. A nice little sentence in several ways. Interesting, short, defines a main caracter.

And so I built on that little sentence.

Now I have a bit over two pages of a start, and when I read back over it just a moment ago I felt myself grin.

“That’s Nice,” I thought.

That’s Nice.