The Coffee-House Experience

I'm not really a coffee house writer. Although I can write in pretty busy situations, I do like my privacy for all those random faces I make when visualizing scenes. However tonight some of my friends wanted to go downtown and listen to a free concert that a popular Christain band member was doing, and I thought it sounded like something that would, quite randomly, be fun.

So we drove down to the coffe shop and I brought my writer's notebook and worked through the first draft of the plot for my rewrite of Thistles. Because it deals with time-travel, all of the little details really have to be mapped out from the get-go. Not an easy thing to do- especially when I have to handwrite it all. But being more or less confined to my chair, I had no choice but to hammer away at those details until I had figured out the importance and relation of them all. It's far from perfect, but I have my map now, and there's light in many places that were still pitch-black earlier today.

Speaking of light and dark, we drove through the most amazing weather on our way home. The rain was pouring down like crazy. On one side was the dark, stormy sky, with lighting flashing over the skyscrapers and cathedrals of the city. On the other was the golden haze of clouds masking the sunset. The contrast was almost eerie.

And then as we drove away from the city the fierceness of the lightning gave way to layer upon layer of misty clouds, shot with rays of light, and the golden haze vanished to reveal the huge orange sun hanging in the west.

There are some benefits to being a backseat passenger, as opposed to driver or navigator.