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The colors are so different out here.
Oct. 5th, 2022 10:17 pmMelinda Duval had certain habits she knew probably weren't that healthy. She was inside too much, for one thing. And she almost never cooked for herself. She ate as well as she could but only because she ate where she could sit for hours.
She rarely ever wrote in private anymore. Privacy was for editing where she could tear out her hear and swear up a blue streak. If she wanted to get words on the page she needed humanity around her. There was an irony to that, of course, given the horrors she put on the page. Her father had been horrified to learn she’d written the story about the demon that ate kittens while sitting on a blanket near a playground.
She tried to explain that the little boy trash talking his older sister had inspired the demon. That hadn’t helped. Then she’d said the whole kitten thing was because one of the moms had on a sweatshirt with the creepiest, fluffiest kitten ever seen on it. Her mother, at least, had understood that one.
“All of those “I need to announce I’m a middle-aged and no longer sexually attractive” designs are horrific.” Mell had used that line in another story, this one about a suburban succubus that’s she’d sold to Playboy. Then she’d promptly bough the most horrible sweatshirt she could and sent it to her mother.
At the moment, though, she was sitting just outside an open café in New Mexico. The sun was too much for her and the sand kept getting in her coffee. There was a good breeze, though, and she’d been settled in there for a while because the staff quietly kept her drink topped off. One of the waitresses even made sure she had a pastry at all times.
If she hadn’t been due back in New York City at the end of the week, she might have stayed out there until the end of the month. The words were flowing, the pastries kept coming and there were plenty of places for her to walk off the sweets when her work day was done.
The finished the story she’d been working on with a huff of annoyance. The story needed a hook at the end, something that would stay with the reader for a while afterwards but all she could come up with was, “And then the sun set.”
“Lame!” she muttered as she closed out the file and shut down her computer. “Because the sun doesn’t set EVERY freaking other day!” She’d be able to fix it later. It was fiction. Everything could be fixed later. There was no reason to get so hung up on one sentence except it was lazy as hell and she knew it. Her hands itched to open the laptop again and get to work right away, but she knew that was the wrong choice.
Instead, she forced herself to sit back, sip her coffee, and look around. Anything to distract herself until the waves of annoyance faded.
She rarely ever wrote in private anymore. Privacy was for editing where she could tear out her hear and swear up a blue streak. If she wanted to get words on the page she needed humanity around her. There was an irony to that, of course, given the horrors she put on the page. Her father had been horrified to learn she’d written the story about the demon that ate kittens while sitting on a blanket near a playground.
She tried to explain that the little boy trash talking his older sister had inspired the demon. That hadn’t helped. Then she’d said the whole kitten thing was because one of the moms had on a sweatshirt with the creepiest, fluffiest kitten ever seen on it. Her mother, at least, had understood that one.
“All of those “I need to announce I’m a middle-aged and no longer sexually attractive” designs are horrific.” Mell had used that line in another story, this one about a suburban succubus that’s she’d sold to Playboy. Then she’d promptly bough the most horrible sweatshirt she could and sent it to her mother.
At the moment, though, she was sitting just outside an open café in New Mexico. The sun was too much for her and the sand kept getting in her coffee. There was a good breeze, though, and she’d been settled in there for a while because the staff quietly kept her drink topped off. One of the waitresses even made sure she had a pastry at all times.
If she hadn’t been due back in New York City at the end of the week, she might have stayed out there until the end of the month. The words were flowing, the pastries kept coming and there were plenty of places for her to walk off the sweets when her work day was done.
The finished the story she’d been working on with a huff of annoyance. The story needed a hook at the end, something that would stay with the reader for a while afterwards but all she could come up with was, “And then the sun set.”
“Lame!” she muttered as she closed out the file and shut down her computer. “Because the sun doesn’t set EVERY freaking other day!” She’d be able to fix it later. It was fiction. Everything could be fixed later. There was no reason to get so hung up on one sentence except it was lazy as hell and she knew it. Her hands itched to open the laptop again and get to work right away, but she knew that was the wrong choice.
Instead, she forced herself to sit back, sip her coffee, and look around. Anything to distract herself until the waves of annoyance faded.
