I spent most of yesterday morning taking care of about a dozen little nitnoid tasks. The annoying sort that pile up and pile up and finally you decide to go ahead and do them, because they should only take about five minutes or so each, but so many of them have been lurking and waiting for you that you spend hours clearing them out.

And then I had nothing to do, so I pulled out my writing. And couldn't get anywhere. I stared at that blank screen. I went to get some tea. I re-read the previous chapter (and made some minor edits). I stared at the blank screen some more. I went to get some tea.

While I was refilling my mug, my eye snagged on the shelves of junk food in the kitchen. Mmmm.... Chocolate.

If you write 500 words, I told myself, you can have some chocolate.

I finished refilling my tea, and went back to my desk, and stared at the blank screen.

Write something. Write anything! I could see, clearly, in my mind, what the character was going to do. It refused to form itself into words that didn't sound like micro-managing stage direction.

So I wrote stage directions. Leave the room. Close the door. Walk down the hall. Listen at another door. Go down the stairs. Go into the bathroom. Get undressed. Check the bandages. (Wince.) Stop poking at them, and clean up. If I couldn't see into the character's head, I could at least manipulate his body.

And then finally, he let me in. (I get the best stories out of him when he's in the bathroom. He's such a girl, I swear.) But he told me something that had happened some years earlier. It had nothing to do with the plot, and yet, it had everything to do with the plot.

So I wrote it down. And I kept writing.

And when I finally stopped to take a breath, I'd written a little over twelve hundred words.

I haven't written that much in a single sitting for months. I nearly cried.

I went to the gym, and I thought about what was going to happen next, and what order the events should occur, and I didn't really notice doing the workout at all.

The bitchy part is that I'm not going to have much time for writing today. I've got conference calls from noon straight through to three, and I can't write when there's a conference call going on, even if I'm not actively participating. It's too distracting. And I have to leave promptly at 4 in order to go to the dentist and have a cracked filling replaced, and an hour isn't really sufficient time to do anything, writing-wise.

So the only writing time I'll have is this morning.

But maybe I can make it count. My muse, she's a whore for chocolate.

--Liz