There's a story premise--well, really an opening scene--that's been teasing at the back door for a few years. I've written down the basic idea a few times, just sort of teasing it back so it knows I hear it scratching.

Just before I left for Kentucky to teach at Novels-In-Progress, I found myself extremely impatient to get something actually started, worked on, and finished. On the one hand, that could be a way of avoiding The Big Project; but on the other hand, closure and completion and having something to look back on with pride is a big deal too. Just... it is.

So I decided that during the week I was in Kentucky, I'd take a break from The Big Project and focus on The New Little Interim Project. When I lifted off from JFK, it stood at two pages. When I flew back into JFK, it was at 11, which is where it stayed for another week while daily life interfered--but more important than the page count, I'd discovered the ending.

Which was very upsetting. It's not the ending I set out to reach. It's far bleaker and fatalistic than anything I've ever written: much darker than anything I've ever set out to write. I rejected it for a full 24 hours. I had dinner with Seidman and told him I didn't even know if I wanted to write it, not because it wasn't the perfect ending that gave me chills, but because I didn't know if I wanted to spend several months and a lot of money shooting something that dark.

The next day, I found him in the dorm lobby and told him I'm stuck with it. That's the ending. There is no other ending it can have. And I invited him upstairs and told him the plot, and when I got to It, he said, Oh!... and rubbed his arm as though he had goosebumps.

You have to, he said.

I know, I said.

Then it had to sit for a week when I got back, because of work and life things. And it was screaming at me the whole time, and I was in a really black, emotional mood the whole time. Yesterday, I got up early (well, early for a weekend) and jumped on the Long Island Railroad, and after a couple of conversations (first with the conductor, then with a nice lady crocheting bright yellow doilies in a gray concrete information booth), ended up on a 3-hour train ride to Montauk.

If your goal is to sit on a train and write, Montauk is a good destination. I asked the conductor what time the last train back to the city was. He left and came back: It's at 7:30.

The first hour or so, I added some plot cards to the short stack of 3x5s I'd put together, and then I opened the laptop, deleted a couple pages, and wrote a couple new ones. In Montauk, where there is nothing near the train station, I picked a direction and started walking, and ended up--a mile or two later--in a diner near a little townish traffic circle, where they said no, there's no coffeehouse in town, but there's the library, it's a beautiful little library, down that way on the left.

Down that way turned out to be about another mile, and the library was beautiful, and little, and did have tables on the tiny second floor, with outlets on the floor underneath, under hinged brass concealing plates.

That was around two o'clock. When they closed at five, I'd written twenty pages and FADE TO BLACK and THE END.

I hurried back to the train station because I didn't know what time the next train out was. I assumed I'd need all the time I could get, catching the 7:30 back home with a half-completed draft. The bass throb of the train engines makes your head vibrate when you're still a mile away, which makes you hurry if you don't know the schedule. Here's the only thing I slowed down to do:





Today I'm in a pretty decent mood, and I don't even know if the story's any good. It doesn't scare me, and it doesn't give me chills. But it's down on paper, ready for rewrite. I'm not ready to do that yet. I need a few days, I think.

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