Mary and I just had a conversation where she asked me how I liked a book, I told her she’d never leant me the book, reminded her that she was actively holding the book while discussing it, and that I live two hours away from her and we are on phones. She proceeded to hysterically wheeze ‘YA KNOW,’ and other Mary idioms before she described not knowing how to sigh without screaming anymore.

I want to bottle her essence and use anxiety as a perfume.

So, instead of working like a normal person, I have started taking ‘cigarette breaks’ at work where I write 1,300 word character reflections. Initially these were literally cigarette breaks where characters like Marc, who smokes, would ponder something over a cigarette. Or characters who don’t smoke, like Mikka, would bum a cigarette/make some comment on smoking. This serves:

1. my desire to describe bodily functions (har har)
2. my mental health maintenance
3. my need for structured writing time

Today, however, took a turn. Because instead of writing my cigarette break, I wrote a character death. I had kind of woke up thinking about it and so when a meeting got cancelled, there it was. It was not the cigarette break I had been intending to write…I was gonna write about New Years in Alba….and it’s going to take some revisions, but…yeah.

Normally I save writing character deaths for when I am alone and can throw myself around and figure out blocking. But this one was….kinda sweet? I couldn’t do staging so it had to be hushed, kind of intimate.

…I should probably not get in the habit of seriously writing while at work.

She just understand what a scene needs.