That's what it took. Though for all I know the pearl will not form. Or, if formed, will sit in the oyster until it rots. But I'm writing a short story.
A closed call for stories came out from NOLAFugees the same day I read a feature in Harper's about New Orleans. My first reaction was to write back to NOLAFugees and say that since their deadline was July 10 they were probably looking for work from all the writers who now were coming out of their respective funks and producing after I've gone to ground. And then to write to Harper's and tell them that their piece made even me, a bleeding resident, feel Katrina fatigue. It did not miss one cliche.
But that night I had the bad idea that I would sleep well if I took a good painkiller because I'd decided to move all the cypress doors that had been sitting by my pool into the basement; they'd been there since I demo-ed out after the storm. Bad idea for sleep. Good idea for waking up every hour with tiny increments of progress toward a story.
I'm maybe a third of the way through. I'm going to mix my media and please myself. Letter to the editor morphs into short story with self thinly disguised. I'm going to imagine meeting this writer and make him into a foolish female journalist. Hell, evidently I can do that in my sleep.
