The three-day short story

Whenever I'm quiet, it means I'm writing. This week, I've been writing. I've been writing despite being on the ohmygods early shift, which sometimes happens when I get trained to do something. It means getting up at 4:30 and getting picked up at 5:00 by a bank-paid driver, and then starting work at 6. This kind of shift involves large amounts of strong coffee and a complete collapse of all nervous functions at around 13:00, with nothing remaining but the desire to go to sleep and take a week off.

(They do pay me well for it, though, and there's something fascinating and beautiful and dejected about London at dawn.)

So, yeah, on Monday, while I was feeling sorry for myself and my biorhythm, an Idea Happened. Before that, I'd been pointed at Storm Moon Press' gun kink submissions call. I While I've used weapons a fair amount in my previous stories, this was interesting because immediately I tought that this time, the weapon really needs to take center stage. Which was an interesting challenge.

The Muse agreed.

I ended up writing a 9k story in three days. Now, I'm happy with my wordcount if I make 1,000 words/day. 500/day is better than nothing. 1,500/day is what I call a "good day". 2,000 is noteworthy good. 3,000 is more like a weekend output, realistically speaking. Keeping that level up for three days while sleep-lagged is nothing short of miraculous. If Storm Moon Press likes it, it should come out in January 2012, so that's my first potential release for next year.

Downside of writing that hard? I didn't write at all yesterday and my brain is in that weird hazy state where it tries to work out what project to work on now. Or whether it can be bothered at all.

What I did do was help a friend who needed to cut 18k from her manuscript -by cutting the final 2k and wrapping things up on that side. Still a sense of accomplishment, and one item off the big pile of Things to be Done.

But boy, I'm ready for the four-day Easter weekend before me.