The Whoosing Sound They Make

Spent the weekend in Gracetown, a small beach resort about three hours south of Perth. Mired in school holidays as we are, we chipped in with some friends to rent a place down there for a few nights, the idea being that all the kids could play with each other down the beach while I got stuck into the various stories I have to work on. The house even came with a little office that looked out over the coast:



No internet, no mobile phone reception, no kids, nice view - the perfect writing environment. Except ...


Yes, flying in the face of the loooong periods of sunshine and near-drought conditions in Western Australia recently, the skies opened on the trip down and kept on dumping water for most of the weekend. Which meant no beach for the kids. Which meant no peace in the house.


On a good writing day, I can clear about 2000 words of useable prose, so this trip was my chance to complete a 5000 word short story for which the deadline is rapidly approaching. Instead my total word count for the whole weekend: 556.


The upside is that those 556 words comprise the opening scene of the story, traditionally the part I find the hardest to get out of the way. Once that's done, it's usually plain sailing - and term starts back at school on Monday ... I might just make that deadline after all.