Marty

The kettle started to shriek and Marty snapped the book shut and grunted out of the chair. He went to the stove and removed the kettle from the stove, pouring the steaming water into a coffee mug with a picture of a cartoon bear on it. The mug said Yosemite National Park on it in script that wrapped around the picture of the bear. His sister had bought him this mug when her and her husband and her brood of kids went to the park. She was always going places. She lived currently in Galveston, TX where her husband worked as an accountant or an actuary or a gravedigger.

Marty reached in the cupboard for a box of tea bags. There were two of them in the cupboard: a yellow box for the morning and a blue one for the evening. He grabbed the blue box and pulled the last tea bag from the box and soaked it in his mug.

“I’ll need to go to the store tomorrow,” he said and nodded his head in agreement as he bobbed the bag in the water. Vapor condensed on his wrist.

He thought about his sister and the places she’d gone. He didn’t understand her, never had, not even as kids. One day she’d called to him and told him to follow her, and when he rounded the house he saw her standing over a spot on the lawn and looking down at something in the lawn. He walked up to her, reaching for her hand as he always did at that age. On the ground was a tiny bird and it opened and closed its beak in silent suffering.

Year of the Novel: Vacation Blues...JK! Vacation Awesome! Writing Staycation, 2011!

So, as it turns out, not having a job is really very good for writing novels. I put my two weeks in at the bank about eight business days ago and, as is common in the banking industry, I was immediately terminated. Don't worry, y'all, me and the bank are still cool but they just didn't want me stealing trade secrets or customer info or whatnot. At any rate, since I wasn't starting the new job until after Memorial Day, I decided to pretend that I was a real professional writer and get some serious work done on the manuscript.

I found out a few things about my writing self during the eight business days of writing staycation, 2011.