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A Man of Yet a Few More Words - by Swan Morrison

Writing From Life

There was a one hour break before the next workshop at the writers’ conference.

Sally took her coffee to a vacant table in a corner of the refectory. She sat down and removed her writing pad and pen from her bag. This was an ideal opportunity to use the ideas she had heard in that last workshop to start a new short story.

Marcus walked into the refectory, she wrote as she observed a random but rather good-looking delegate enter the refectory and approach the serving counter. The idea of taking inspiration from events in the world around her was working well, so far.

He approached the serving counter and purchased a coffee, she wrote as the stranger paid for his drink and came to sit at the table next to hers.

Sally waited for the next action of this man to lead her into a subsequent paragraph. He sat motionless, however, which Sally thought rather uninspiring.

He took a laptop from his bag and opened it on the table, Sally continued without awaiting a prompt from life.

Suddenly, the man reached for his bag, removed a laptop and opened it on the table in front of him.

Marcus looked towards the woman on the adjacent table and smiled, wrote Sally. ‘Are you writing a story from life based on that last workshop,’ he said. Sally added her first line of dialogue.

‘Are you writing a story from life based on that last workshop,’ enquired the man at the next table, smiling at Sally.

'Yes,' appeared the reply of the second protagonist on Sally's page.

‘Yes,’ said Sally in a perplexed tone, pausing and briefly glancing at the man before returning to scribbling further words on the page

‘I must admit,’ Sally attributed to Marcus, ‘that I could hardly concentrate in that session as I was too distracted by looking at the beautiful woman who was sitting just in front of me.’

‘I must admit,’ said the handsome stranger as soon as Sally had finished writing, ‘that I could hardly concentrate in that session as I was too distracted by looking at the beautiful woman who was sitting just in front of me.’

Sally was a little spooked at what appeared to be happening, but resolved that this was the time to take advantage of the phenomenon rather than pause to analyse it. She knew that she must quickly clarify in her writing that the girl to whom Marcus was talking was the beautiful woman to whom he had referred and that Marcus was leading-up to revealing his feelings for her. Also that Marcus was a millionaire, and that he had ultimately swept the aspiring authoress off her feet at what was the start of a wonderful, fairy-tale romance.

In her panic to write so much, so quickly, her hands fumbled with the pad and pen and both fell to the floor. She bent down to retrieve them and accidently kicked the pad under another nearby table.

As she stood up to recover her notes, the man spoke again: ‘Ah, the lady to whom I was referring has just walked into the refectory. I must go and speak with her. Excuse me.’ He stood and walked away.

‘Shit!’ said Sally, under her breath.

Sally retrieved her pen and pad, turned to a new page and started to write once again: Brad Pitt walked into the refectory, she scribbled. He thought he would never get over his split from Angelina Jolie until he saw the woman of his dreams. She was sitting in the corner of the refectory wearing a red top and a beige skirt – Sally briefly checked the other tables to make sure no one else was sporting the same colour combination that she had chosen to wear today – Brad at once fell desperately in love with her and they had an idyllic partnership for ever after.

Sally looked up and scanned the recent arrivals in the refectory. She was in luck. Brad had not yet appeared.

She placed her pen and pad on the table in front of her and waited…