That’s right, babies. I wrote a heck of a lot today (compared to the daily totals this week, with all the socializing).

1523 words today. I am pleased with myself. I owe it all to air conditioning, kids. If I had to sit on my backporch where I usually write, not a word would have been added today. Instead I’ve been have a lie-in in, as Bridget Jones said, Bedfordshire. Yes, I’m writing from the cushy confines of my bed, and it is lovely. Our bedroom is currently the only room of our house with AC. We could fix this by putting in the window unit that goes into the living room, but, yeah, it’s hot.

Ursa is loving the AC, too. Well, she wasn’t, and she wanted to go outoutout of this room boringborinboring but then after her walk, she went straight to the bedroom door and waited for me to do her bidding. She is a fast learner.

Back to the writing thing. It was an interesting day, in terms of figuring things out. Yesterday I was very much fed up with the whole problem of geography. Where is my protagonist from? Something I should have figured out long ago, but when I started this thing, it was a short story, and we didn’t need to know that particular detail. She was within a certain landscape at the outset of the story, it wasn’t her hometown, that was enough. Now that I’m sending her back, though, I had to figure out where back was. And it needed to be somewhere rather far-ish from where I’d set the main story, for plot reasons. And it needed to be the kind of place that added something to the story. And it needed to be the kind of place I knew about, so I could write the damn thing. Tall order. I’ve been to lots of places, but as I went through a couple of ideas and even tried to start writing that trip back to one of them, it wasn’t right.

Then: idea. (Greg will try to tell you it was his idea. It was MY idea, but I had already discarded it. So when he suggested it, it just REMINDED me. Oh, fine. He gave me the idea.) And things I hadn’t started to figure out yet started to figure themselves out. I made some notes so I wouldn’t forget everything, but that’s why I was such a typist today. I had kindling for the fire—I couldn’t do anything but write today.

Am hoping I feel the same way tomorrow, but for now, I think I need to read a book. In the AC, of course.