Falling leaves

Back in Northumberland, nursing the last of the cold, as a guest of my lovely sister and bro-in-law, who have an aga (bliss).

It is the coldest morning to date – verging on frost and with a dense white fog. The Beech tree beyond the door is shedding leaves so fast it looks like golden snowfall, with a similar crispy whisper.

Today is the first day I feel inclined to work again – I am making use of the Aga to stay in pajamas and try to make up for lost time on the step-outline.

I have been working on the same story now for 6 years (not exclusively, of course, but pretty consistently. The thought process is different – a series of small "aha!" as I rehearse the possibilities while walking.

This story has its origins in a sickbed. In 2001 I had been writing short stories for under a year, all arriving as a result of internal conversations, "what ifs" and being resolved into finished pieces within a few days I actually used to rush home from work to complete them in a hot flush of invention. There was no room for any other words in my head.

Then I got bronchitis after a bad winter cold – exacerbated by the fact that my desk at the time was in a basement, which was also used as a smoking room by other employees. The window next to which I perched was thickly coated with tar, so that the light filtering down from street level had a sepia glow to match the 1950s conditions. I had a bar heater on one side and the PC to the other to provide heat. A year later the

It took me almost 4 weeks to recover. When I tried to return to work the smoke drove me straight back to bed within two days.

I was soooooo bored of the hours spent swaddled in bed – upright to relieve the strain on the lungs, listening to the radio, sleepless through the night, listless through the day and living on soup. I doodled as a listened, a woman in a black coat running down a the stairs from a court room, a man following who had believed she was dead, who needed to know why she had disappeared. It was a scene I had created and run through my head for amusement for almost 15 years. I tried to remember where it had come from. A dream about a desert, a crashed jeep, a woman with a rifle and two lovers. For the first time I tried to write it down.

4 hours later I had 15 pages of single line typescript, starting:

*****

INT. WATERLOO STATION. DAY

Ellen alights from the train in the smoky grey dawn light, carrying a small vanity case and a handbag. She passes porters, early morning workers, mail bags being unloaded, two West Indian Airmen with kit bags, international travellers from the boat train, a cleaner sweeping the concourse.

She searches in her purse for change. She is wearing close fitting black leather gloves.

She opens her purse. No change, only notes.

She buys a newspaper with a 10-shilling note. The seller grumbles.

She enters the ladies rest room, and uses a penny to open a cubicle door.

INT. LAVATORY CUBICLE – DAY

Ellen locks the door and lowers the seat. She kneels on the cubicle floor, places the vanity case on the seat in front of her and opens it. Rummaging inside she retrieves the parts of a handgun and assembles it - with remarkable efficiency. She is still wearing the gloves. She puts the gun in her handbag.

********

It's very different now. But so is the rhythm of writing, and that is why I am procrastinating by blogging instead of working!