I didn't mean to go to market...

[desperance]

...Well, actually I did mean to go there, obviously, but only to buy mushrooms and look at books.

I appear to have come home with two ducks.

It's not my fault, honest. Two fresh ducks, for a fiver? This is not the kind of deal I turn down.

I think I shall curry the breasts, confit the legs and make soup with the carcasses and wings. Oh, yes. Should you want me, these autumnal days, you will find me in the kitchen.

Why yes, as it happens, I do have an urgent story to write. Why else would you seek me in the kitchen...?

But seriously: this morning, in bed early, I had pretty much decided it had to be a ghost story. A ghost story told in a fantasy world: I liked this, as a conceit.

This morning late, here at the machine, I read through what I'd written - 4000 words, more or less - and wanted to tear it entirely up. Or not that so much, perhaps, but to distil it all to a single sentence that I haven't actually written yet.

So I went shopping, and had the retail experience described above; and in the last two minutes of walking home, the story completely remade itself in my head, so it now has a plot (of sorts), and a theme (of a kind), and I can keep the material I have (for the moment). So that's all right.

It's going to be a heartbreaker.

Comments

[szandara.livejournal.com]

Clearly, your story needed ducks, or at least, needed you to go out and find unexpected ducks.

[dedbutdrmng.livejournal.com]

I'm not feeling very well. I'm a bit fuzzy. Which is why I read your last sentence as 'I'm going to be a hairdresser.'

I wish I had ducks.

Well, not today I don't. When I'm ready to eat again, then I'll wish I had ducks. The worst resteraunt meal I ever ate was duck. You could have used it to sole shoes. Terrible, but I was too English to send it back.

[wishwords.livejournal.com]

Isn't it lovely when everything falls into place, including the makings of several meals worth of food for the writer?

Comment reposted due to a VERY unfortunate typo

[esmeraldus-neo.livejournal.com]

This whole thing is beginning to take shape now, but will make more sense if the ducks were, uh, pre-deceased.

Because when you say you butchered ducks, I think of LIVE ducks. And wonder why in god's name you were killing waterfowl INSIDE your house.