Writing Again

One of my goals for the year is to try to get another book written. As part of that I figured I would post some of my writing up here as I worked on it. One caveat though for those of you expecting a sequential set of posts that culminate in a book: that’s not going to happen.

First off, I don’t write sequentially. I write the parts that I feel like writing or which are the most fun to write. Then I tie them together.

Secondly, I’m throwing up first drafts, so though something similar may appear in the final form, I wouldn’t count on it remaining unchanged.

So without further ado, the first real writing I have done in quite some time. I hope you like it.

Paul laid down in the cold, impersonal sheets of the hotel room. It had been a long day of travel, having been shuttled half way across the country and then had to stop due to storms preventing his connection from making it through to Atlanta. So there he was in a hotel room right outside the Dallas/Fort Worth airport at 12:30 am. He laid his head down on the pillow and thought of his bed at home the last time he had been there. Had it been a week already? He had been traveling to make some business deals and to do some research, but at that moment, he wanted nothing more to be home in his warm bed.

He closed his eyes and could see his wife laying there. Her gold hair spread on the pillow as the blankets rose with each breath. Her arm the only other part of her showing. He had laid there for while knowing he would be heading out in the morning and it would be several weeks before he would be home. He knew he would miss laying next to her and listening to her breathe and feeling her warmth as he snuggled closer to try to stay under some measure of the covers as she wrapped herself more and more tightly against the colder ambient air.

Why she liked to turn the heat down at night he would never understand. She claimed it was to save money on the heating bill, but that couldn’t be the real reason. The heating bills were never that high and the bills weren’t ever that tight. But he loved the mock arguments in the morning when they got up to the cold temperatures.

And then there was the little blonde haired beauty. The other love of his life, who at just under two, was quite a dynamo. She had come in that night before he had fallen asleep with a tear in her eye because something had scared her in her bed. No one could have refused the plea to come into the bed. And he didn’t really mind as she climbed in between he and his wife, snuggling in and asleep within seconds.

That was the reason he did what he did. Not only for the paycheck to help support them and to be able to buy toys and presents and keep up with his wife’s seemingly insatiable gardening and farming projects. No, that was only part of it. That everyone should be able to experience that was the other reason for his long nights, hard work and extended times away. Everyone should be able to snuggle next to their spouse and have their children with them without having to worry about things like the heating bill. That was why he did what he did.

But that was little consolation sitting there in that dark, plain hotel room with the lights of the city off in the distance. So he turned on the TV, set it to turn off in twenty minutes and rolled over, pushing the nostaglia from his mind and quickly falling asleep to how the latest and greatest, super absorbant towel could be had for slightly less than he had paid for dinner that night.