Well that was unexpected.

I’m making a commitment to my writing again. Not Writing As Event, just butt in chair, writing.

This weekend while I was away at a workshop, ants started an assault on my house. When I got home, there was a parade line from the side door, through the hallway and into the kitchen to the cat’s food. I discovered a 2″x1/4″ gap at the bottom of the side door, as well as gaps around the threshold/door jam that I’ve taken care of today.

All of that meant I didn’t have the writing time I’d planned on. But again, butt in chair, write when you can. I carved out 30 minutes and re-started that seamstress story (never finished it the other day.) Wrote about 500 words then went to do everything else I needed to do.

Driving home from the store, the rest of the story popped into my head. So when I got home I sat down and I finished the short story — maybe 1200 words, not very long at all. And it’s weird, let me tell you.

Then I realized that what I’d just written was the potential prologue for a novel. Not a long novel, maybe more like a novella, of what happens after the story, which is just as important.

I’m still poking at it, letting the back brain figure out if this is something I want to continue with or not. As usual, the whole thing arrived in my head at once — I know the first couple scenes, I see at least one middle scene, and that last scene is really clear.

It isn’t a complicated thing, though. And right now it’s pretty preachy. So I’m still thinking about it. It might be fun to write a 20,000 word novella though over the next couple of weeks. We’ll see.

As I said, unexpected.