HALLOWE'EN STORY BEFORE BEDTIME: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

Night rain, never light rain, crashes into the pavement and ricochets with applause. The raindrop roar sounds right for the time of year. That time smells of October, and October has all the best songs if we write them as fast as thought carries the words to us.

   The writing is slow.

   Even so…

   October has all the best songs if we write them as slow as the leaves turn and fall. All leaves fly in slow-motion. Typing up a storm of words, I feel those letters fly through the blankness and land, footprint by footprint, in the snow.

   The rain fell years ago, on the night I started this blog. I walked through Hallowe’en streets to the town library, and wrestled with Blogger. My deadline was close of business that night. I made it. For a long time, I blogged in advance, then dropped half a dozen posts into the library’s internet pipe.

   Then I upgraded everything. Computer. Desks. The wall. A hole went in through that wall, and brought the street’s internet pipe to my office.

   Here I am, still barely blogging, thinking back to the start of that experience. Over that time, five years, I took one too many knocks at the same time and, sadly, I had to cut back to monthly blogging. Those same knocks threw my writing plans all over the place.

   But I still make writing plans. I’ve gone off into wonderful (terrifying) new avenues, and the exploratory work is slow. Very slow. Thorough, though. No need to bet on that.

*

And here I am, on Hallowe’en itself, grateful that I typed the preceding section well in advance. I knew I’d be hard-pressed to write a story come Hallowe’en. But I tried my damnedest, over this past week.

   The goal was to spend no more than a week creating a story from nothingness.

   At the very least, that story had to run 30,000 words.

   Deadline: tonight.

   Before I turn into a pumpkin at midnight.

   So how did I do?

   Did I write a 30,000-word story in seven days?

   No.

   To write the tale by Hallowe’en, I only had six days. And I used them to write a tale that ran for 40,000 words.

   Time for a coffee, before I massacre people.