I took a little time off, and I wrote a book. Really! It was very exciting until I went back and read it, and realized it was terrible. So now I call it a first draft.

I decided that I would leave work and life for a while, and pen a complete novel in a month. I can't claim credit for this ridiculous idea; I got it from the folks at NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month. They suggest November, which would be an excellent sinking-into-winter month in which to write a book, but I picked August, because I'd spent so long deliriously anticipating the day I would go off to bang out my novel that I just couldn't wait any longer. I felt like if I delayed, 1) my book idea would start to smell like peaches that start to go gray and sour before they fall off the tree, and 2) I would finally wink out into a cool, dissociated ember of my former self.

What I did was this: I left work, Susan, and most everything else and went out to stay beside the river in West Virginia. I didn't have a television, and I forbade myself radio or music of any kind except for very short, strictly rationed periods of time. Eventually, I figured, I would get so bored that I'd have to write the book just to keep myself from going insane. Giving myself only a monthlong window was intended to forestall any of my usual fussiness and perfectionism that would otherwise cause me to obsess over single paragraphs for days on end. It worked; I seldom had time to look back at anything I'd already written except to double-check consistency of details and pick up in the same tone I'd left off in the previous day's work.

A few funny things began to happen as I gradually ceased thinking about much except a small group of made-up people subjected to the conditions of an entirely fabricated life.

The nights were absolutely dark, free of the streetlights and reflected skyglare of the city. It was the way I remembered nights from my childhood: impenetrably blind and full of the sounds of nocturnal life. Despite its familiarity, the total darkness prevented me from sleeping well for the first few days. I had to have a light on somewhere nearby, and woke suddenly throughout the night. I became increasingly under the impression that I was sharing the house with another person -- a woman who viewed me with measured distrust. In evenings she would come to stand outside the house, hidden in the glare of the lit windows, and then enter to walk silently around while I slept. While I didn't believe I was in the presence of a ghost, the consistent sensation of being haunted night after night was disturbing. I wrote late into the evening to minimize the dark hours in which I would have to sleep.

This passed after a week or so, when I told myself to quit being such a lame-ass and started turning out all the lights at night. I went in to pull a shift at the rescue squad and lost a patient. One or both of these conditions caused the anxious, haunted sensations to vanish.

The other really odd event was the day when suddenly a couple characters came alive. They actually had a conversations that made me laugh as I tried to keep up on the laptop keyboard. Once I intended one to apologize to another and - surprise! - she wasn't sorry at all. Not to go overboard on the whole I'm an artiste and my characters have their own lives but there were a few perfect moments in there when I no longer felt alone in the room. It was around then that I began to understand my "ghost" a little better.