Story Drunk

As she walked out to her car, her head buzzed with the chapter she had been working on. The cold air bit at her neck and she pulled her coat collar closer. Could Hazel possibly survive the battle with Tron? It was going to take some deus ex machina—she was no match for him.

The car windows were frosted hard. Darn. Sitting half in the driver’s seat, she turned on the car and cranked the defroster. Owl City blared from the stereo as she pulled out the scraper, got back out and got busy.

The story continued to run amok in her mind as frost crystals flew. She loved living in that world of adventure, playing all the parts, anticipating the responses from her readers as she polished the plot points, sharpened the dialog and fleshed out the characters. She loved seeing what they would do. She loved finding out what would happen next.

It was hard, then, to focus on the mundane tasks of life like scraping the car windows and heading off to work. Nonetheless, she couldn’t deny the beauty of the crisp winter day around her. The high clouds scudded across the sky, bright blue patches like promises between them. Life was beautiful, even if it didn’t move at the pace of an adventure story.

And she had a plan. Her life was her own story, gifted to her by God to explore and expand. She had some ideas of how she would begin to shape it. As far as she knew, she was only getting one life on this earth. And she was going to live it as beautifully and fully as possible.

The windows clear, she tossed the scraper over the extra warm winter coat that seemed to live perpetually in her back seat, jumped behind the wheel and zipped off to work.