While They Sleep

I'd like to share a short piece that I wrote a while back. While teaching last year, I ran a creative writing group and we put together a magazine of the students' writing to share with the whole school. This was my contribution to it. I hope you enjoy it!

While They Sleep

     Sitting in the dark while the house sleeps, its even breaths and snores like a rhythm in my ears, with only the light of a computer screen, I let my fingers carry me to distant places. I let them take me to places with colorful flowers and sparkling waterfalls. Places where I can be the princess and I don't have to kiss a frog if I don't want to! They take me to places that are dark and barren and with my sword I slay fire breathing dragons and creatures with three eyes, whose names haven't yet been tapped out on the keyboard. I run through crowded streets where I smell spices and sand pelts my face so I have to close my eyes but that's ok because I can see with my fingertips as I chase the school of fish that is running on fins with ten toes. I am lost in a land where shelves upon shelves surround me and the books sit on them while they watch me and whisper to each other.

     "Do we know her, Alice?" asks a rabbit wearing a huge hat.

     "I don't think so but maybe Tom does. Can you see him? He's so small," answers the girl with the long blonde hair as a boy, as small as my thumb, peeks out from the pages of his dusty book.

     I can go where the Incas ruled, high above the clouds, and chase away the gold-hungry men with the funny hats because I'm not dizzy and my head isn't light. I trained for it with a little green man with long pointy ears and backward speech. Train me he did! In a land that I reach by walking through a wrinkle in the horizon, I rescue the prince and he asks me to stay but I say, “Not now because I have to sleep but I'll be back tomorrow.” So he tells me he'll leave the wrinkle be until he sees me again but he gives me a pebble to show the guard at the gate upon my return.

     So now that it's late and I must sleep, I close the computer and rest my head. I let my dreams take the place of the keys under my fingers as I clutch the pebble tightly in my hand and sleep.

Every Intention

     This past weekend, I had every intention of sitting down at my computer, with my Ipod, and writing. I am supposed to be working on book 2 of The Quest for Reason series. On my way home from a student's house on Satrday morning, my characters and their predicaments were running through my head. The music in the CD player in the car, which is the same music I need to write, was inspiring new things, as it always does. When I reached home, however, my whole mood changed. My husband was on call this past weekend and I decided to grab my eReader and ride along with him. That's something I used to do in the past but now that life is so hectic I rarely do it. So when the opportunity was there, I grabbed it.
     After hours of emergency-drain-problem calls, he finally had some down time and we ended up looking around in different stores, just like we used to in the past. Though I wasn't at home writing, like I had originally planned, I realized my characters were still with me (or in my head, anyway). It's funny how much they seem to be a part of my life. Seeing an outfit and thinking to myself that it's something Kalia would like or maybe Lily, or Fiore, makes me laugh. I often wonder if it's just me or if other writers experience the same thing.
     By the time we finally got home Saturday night and I went to my room to sit at my computer, I made the mistake of turning the TV on and I found all kinds of shows on about 9/11. I say it's a mistake because I was distracted from my original objective. After sitting there watching these shows, with a pile of tissues in my hand, all creativity left me.
     Sunday was spent on homework and lesson planning so no writing that day either. I promised myself that tonight (Monday) I would write and that's exactly what I'm going to do, especially sinceI saw the guy at work today, the one that comes to pick up his children, the one that looks exactly like my description of Aaron in Lily. I was shocked when I first saw him three weeks ago but needless to say, seeing him inspired some new ideas and reminded me just how much I miss my characters.

Now available ~ Lily by L M DeWalt

Lily, the first novel in The Quest for Reason series by L M DeWalt has been published by ireadiwrite publishing! You can get you copy today at any of the following ~ www.ireadiwrite.com ~ www.amazon.com ~ www.omnilit.com ~ www.smashwords.com ~ www.allromancebooks.com ~ www.booksonboard.com
Lily is available in both English & Spanish!

Enjoy!