I’m on a freelance contract until the end of March, after which time I’ll take a few months to dive into writing my next novel. It’s wholly fictional this time, but no less personal than my first.

In this creative limbo, my writing consists of notes and meanderings that will hopefully build to a graceful spring into that dive. During this fragile phase, and even through the first few drafts, secrecy is key to maintaining my creative freedom and momentum: if I keep it secret, no one will ever know about what I’m making unless I finish it.

The following includes snippets from my exploratory notes—enough to titillate, but not enough to make sense of what the hell I’ve got cookin’!

DAY OF THE SECRET WRITER

Find a seat on the train where I lean against a window so no one can read my phone screen.

The Witch lives alone, of course. The Witch does this stuff in her home, stuff is everywhere. And she washes her scrubs and hangs them to dry next to fetishes made with clay and straw and rusty nails, wrapped with tight braids of human hair—hers or otherwise. Broken children’s toys, old bottles, jars full of dead spiders sorted by species. When she’s anxious she takes a jar down from the shelf to turn on its side in her hands and listen to the soft, papery tinkling of the dead, dry spiders tumbling over each other against the glass.

Turn down the brightness on my work computer screen.

But since she’s not a viewpoint character, we can leave much mysterious.

IS IT LIKE ROBOCOP, WHERE WE SEE THIS PART OF THE STORY THROUGH ONLY _____’S EYES (so to speak)? That’s probably a good idea. That keeps me from over-explaining things, and it keeps _____ in the dark about his origins.

Hope people on their way to the coffee machine don’t catch their eyes on the word “ROBOCOP” billboarded on my screen.

Sit in the office restroom and hold my breath against the atmosphere that smells of overripe-melon and chemical pine. Rush to finish the thought.

The kind of house where all surfaces are smooth and painted, but reveal a bit of grainy texture when examined close, like a giant sheet cake—vanilla with just a touch of lemon to give the walls the nostalgic cast of white in the direct light of an early evening sun. Dark green molding around the edges of the ceiling like extruded icing. She half-expected to look up and instead of the hanging globe light fixture, she’d see in extruded bright yellow cursive, “Happy Birthday Vanessa.”

Wonder if it was worth holding my breath to finish. In context, these may become my favorite lines in the book. They may bloom into fully-realized ideas. The message on the ceiling could turn devastating.

Or I might delete this paragraph.

Or I might forget about it and never read it again.

Ride the bus. A guy with a bloody nose and a Fanta bottle half-full of vodka swings into the seat next to me.

Refers to the Witch as “Mother.” Automatically, a relationship instilled in him by the ritual. Could get a bit fucked up when he sees her as Mother, but she sees him as a lover. Think on that a bit more… Is there something interesting there to explore? Should try it that way first to see.

But there could be something there…

Half-consider typing something that mentions the guy directly to see if he’s reading over my shoulder, but see I’ve passed 500 words.

Sync and close.

Try not to think about it again until tomorrow.

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To read more of my work, here’s a “fun” chapter from my psychological suspense novel I Hear You Watching, based on my lived experience with hearing voices…