Rainy Morning and A Beginning

The rain awakened me last night with its persistent tapping. Acorns hit the roof and the wooden stairs leading up the hill to my house. It sounded like heel clicks and I envisioned a posse of women in black stilettos arriving at my door. What did they want? Perhaps they were the harbinger of a changing season and they soon will be trading their heels for insultated boots.

One manuscript has found a home and another was a finalist in a contest. Although being a finalist does not get me publication, it feels like a tiny validation from the outside world. I will go back to it, reorder the poems, perhaps delete some and add others. I may retitle it.

As the days grow shorter, my narrative grows longer and I wake up with stories perched on the nightstand. First lines haunt my dreams. Today's first line: "I am not a stalker." Go ahead--you write the story. Make her an unreliable narrator. Perhaps she has an addiction to texting and is compulsively texting someone who has made it clear that he isn't interested. Throw in a few other habits, a complicated family dynamic--and there you have it. A beginning.