Last month I wrote about the excruciatingly slow pace with which I have been writing of late.
Just yesterday, though, I wrote an entire story all in one sitting.
Of course, it's only a first draft, and it is but a piece of flash-fiction at around three hundred words. Still, to compose an entire tale at one single strike is--for me, at least--like lightning.
What's even more astonishing is that I got the idea for the story just the day before. Usually when an idea for a story comes to me, I mull it over for days, weeks, months, even years before I commit a single word. Especially such an idea of existential speculation. This idea so inspired me that I simply had to record it. And once I started I had to finish.
Anyway, perhaps it's being on a break from school, or having a day off
of work, or maybe it's a just a singular stroke of creative energy, but
it sure does feel inspiring. I could almost get accustomed to it.
I have read of writers composing stories in a single sitting. I have heard of authors writing a story in a day. I have even seen mention of writers challenging themselves to come up with a story per day for a year. I always thought such feats all but impossible for me with the way I write. Now I know different of myself. It's encouraging, but it's also, honestly, a wee bit frightening. What if the whole way I work--letting stories develop day to day, across entire seasons--is changing? What if my work, itself, is changing? What if, as a writer, I am changing? What if...
What if there's nothing wrong with that?
What if that's all right?
Even still, I do not envision myself quickening the pace of my writing to the point where I am tearing out story after story whenever I sit down at my desk. I suspect I will keep at it slow and steady overall, writing each story as it demands
For, no matter what else, it is as each story demands, in the end.
