What a Night!

Awake a lot. Sometimes I just lay there and stared at the ceiling. I tried to use the time to think of story lines and things I could do with the story I'd started yesterday and was blank. So I lay awake AND couldn't think of anything to get me ahead for today. So while I was on my feet most of the night, it wasn't what you'd call restful.

But I did force myself to get up this morning and I'm going through the motions. I need to slam this coffee and engage the frontal lobes or wherever it is that stuff comes from. Problem is, I left the coffee pot in the kitchen so that means I'm going to have to go back there pretty soon.

In about 20 minutes I have to take Ashton to driving lessons. So I should really get through this part of the day anyway. There's really no reason I can't get this done.

So what am I going to do with this story I started yesterday. I knew it was going to be a problem. I just thought, what the hell, something will work out. Well, I can cut the shit out of it so that it reads faster, but it probably won't mean anything to anybody that isn't a doctor or a nurse, but then I still have to come up with some kind of hook for it.

You know the best thing to do with it is to bury it and come back to it when I think of some direction to take it. I mean, I could write for days, weeks, on the story, just adding stuff to it, but it doesn't get me any closer to a real story with it. You just have the proceedings of a shift, which wouldn't be of interest to many people.

So what do I do? Introduce a big twist? Set the ICU on fire, man with a gun, somebody goes crazy, one of the other patients arrest. The original idea just won't fit in here. It would take pages just to set it up. So what can you do quickly in an ICU for a story. Not the obvious. Everyone assumes the patient will either die or come close. No, you have to kill a nurse to make it interesting, or a doctor.

OK, so who is it? The neuro resident, O'Flaherty? He's the obvious choice. Disgruntled family walks in a shoots him. Certainly, not unheard of. It would disrupt the continuum of care. That's not a bad idea.

More later,