Michelle Matthews's Blog, page 2

Creature

The room was dark and Kelly laid in bed waiting for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. She rolled over again trying not to disturb her husband, Chris. 3:14 in the morning, this has got to be a new record for insomniacs. For the past three weeks, she awakened at the same time, some nights were easier than others to find rest again. That’s when she heard it, the familiar rumble that three weeks ago had sent her husband, half-dressed through the house. She thought it was a burglar, then it was a raccoon outside and now she had no idea what it was. All the previous theories as to the creator of the noise were disproven.

Clang!

She heard something hit the hardwood floor downstairs and she shot straight up in bed. Kelly looked over at her husband who was still asleep and nudged him.

Chris rubbed his face and grumbled, “What.”

“I heard another noise downstairs.”

“God, Kel. We’ve been through this. There’s nothing downstairs, there’s no one outside. It’s just us and Sybil and miles of the farm around us. Go back to sleep.”

Chris rolled over and was soon lightly snoring again. Kelly sat there listening. It must have been Sybil, their white Persian. Undoubtedly, she was downstairs on the kitchen island knocking over a glass. The noise Kelly heard was the cup hitting the floor. It still made her heart race, the thought of the unknown. She looked across the room at their bedroom door, it was still closed and locked. Kelly couldn’t fall asleep unless her door was locked and she often checked it multiple times during the night when she got up to pee, just to make sure.

Creak… Creeeeak…

The hardwood floor in the hall outside their bedroom groaned under the weight of something, Kelly assumed it was Sybil trying to get in again. Soon, she would hear the familiar cry of their cat and her claws scraping against the door as she begged to enter. Kelly waited but heard nothing. The house was quiet again. She tried to go back to sleep but something was nagging at her, she had the strangest sensation that she was being watched. She looked around the room, everything was as it should be except for their closet door. Kelly always closed it, every night the same routine and yet tonight it was open. She couldn’t sleep if the door were open. As she slid out of bed to close it, she looked down and saw Sybil lying sweetly in her cat bed, asleep.

 

Why Is Writing So Hard?

I shouldn’t say writing is hard but staying motivated is.

In the last month, I think I might have completed one chapter of my novel. I’ve had absolutely 0 new ideas. Well, let me roll that back a bit, I’ve had 0 new ideas for the novel I’m currently working on. Ideas for new works have been free flowing. Currently, I have about seven different stories written down in my outline book. My marble old school composition book is my Holy Grail. It holds all my ideas and God help me if I ever lose it because there goes everything. Hey, I never said I was smart.

I have tons of reasons, call them excuses, for why I haven’t sat down to write.

The first one, my youngest children, my boys start Kindergarten this fall and this is my last month with my babies. Next week, they’ll start school and no longer will I be able to call them babies, they will officially be kids and I feel some type of way about that. I internalize everything and because of that, my brain fogs over under the stress and with it go my ideas.

The second excuse, I just didn’t feel like it. I did other things, like reading and research. Reading is always good, especially when your mentor gives you a list of books to read that might help you on the journey to becoming a better writer. I also created this blog as a way to write something when I’m drawing a blank for the novel. A lot of good it’s served because I haven’t written anything new here either.

My third and last excuse is a combination of wedding and vacation planning, which is the only one of the three that I would actually consider legitimate. To my workaholic self, I still say no excuse is good enough. I should have written something.

Last night the muse finally hit me. I think it happened because I stopped beating myself up about the fact that I wasn’t working on my project. Ideas seemed to flow as easily as they had when I first sat down to start Parking Lot nearly six months ago. That’s reassuring to me as it proves that I’m not a hack and I might be able to actually pull this off. I can dream.

Just in case, you were wondering about all my new ideas here’s one of them because I’m a broken fridge.

The first tidbit of All Inclusive.

“The beach stretched on for miles. Waves lapped the shore. It’s beauty, transcendent. Elevating her soul to places it had no right to go at such a young age.”

There you go. That little bit woke me up out of a dead sleep and I had to write it down, then I went back to bed. It will fit in well as a good beginning to that story which will probably be a short fiction piece that I’ll use for a contest when I get around to writing it.

Now back to the keyboard and Parking Lot and you get back to writing. Your time of procrastination has ended.