rational geekery

I was awake last night until 3 am. I went to bed at about twenty past twelve; I just laid there, eyes as wide as a nocturnal rodent. But then it came. It’s what drunks sometime refer to as a ‘moment of clarity’, a conscious moment where the clouds of the mind open and reveal a perfect blue sky.

For weeks I have been mulling over a difficult sex scene in my novel. Should I tackle it and risk coming across as either a talentless pervert, or a clumsy buffoon; or should I a la Nick Hornby, cop out, and tell the reader it’s none of their business. But as the clouds moved it came to me, a tender sensuous encounter. Honest but not explicit.

I’m not sure what brought on this short episode of lucidity and creativity, but it got my mind racing into plot twists, narrative devices and set pieces. It’s a shame we’re sharing a room with our 14-month-old toddler, because I dared not open the laptop fearing the whirling of the hard-drive would awake him from his slumber. Thankfully this morning the memory of last nights brainstorm remains, but instead of an open cloudless sky of creativity ahead, there is now a murky uneasy vista…