July 29th – 627,776

I suppose many of you will make comments along the lines of “he did it again”, and I have to hold my hand up and accept that, yes I did. Today, I managed to write 3,416 words in double quick time on a completely new story idea that I spent a good proportion of the early hours of this morning formulating in my head – instead of sleeping.

There was a very simple reason – our three smoke detectors in the house, all decided to start giving out battery replacement beeps in the aforementioned early hours. Not all at the same time, but all of them during the morning. Quite why they don’t give you a warning during the day time, I don’t know, but they do so at night – I guess it’s something to do with the temperature. So every hour or so, I was being disturbed by a persistent beep, every three or four minutes, until I’d get up and take the battery out of it, then go back to bed, only for it to repeat with the next one.

Since I couldn’t get back to sleep, my mind started working, and sleep became an even more remote possibility, and at some point my brain switched from frustration mode, into creative one, and bingo a complete story dropped into my head. By this morning I had, names, location, occupations, characters, appearances even wardrobe details in my head so it was one of those stories that just cried out “launch”.

Three thousand four hundred odd words later, the story is launched, and I can honestly say I think it’s got the legs to convert into a well-rounded novel. For once, if the story pans out at the right length, I can’t see a sequel to it, at all. Never mind, by the time I do get round to getting back to it, I’ll probably have a different thought pattern.