The Night Shift

They woke me up at 3:21 a.m. wanting to play Rock-Paper-Scissors and Monopoly.

"Seriously? Now? Can't we do this another time?"

Not quite awake, I appeased them by rolling over in bed and reached for my iPhone, my new way of writing down scenes when they come to me at odd hours. The bright screen hurt my eyes. My fingers seemed too big for the small touch screen. Because of all the mistakes, it took me twice the time to write as it usually does. Before long however, my brain clicked into gear. I caught up to speed (woke up) and realized the brilliance of my characters and why they needed to wake me up for this "game playing."

My body tensed and it seemed as though I couldn't keep up. For at least twenty minutes, my main character took center stage and directed my fingers in the dark. She weaved scenes, thoughts and dialogue into a seamless piece of work. She took me back to her eight-year-old self, sharing deep-rooted pain and longings. Her childish games and poor life choices made sense to me now. Brilliant pieces of her life wove themselves together, and I, the lucky recipient, gladly took them all in - her beautiful tapestry of heartache and loss.

I turned my cell phone off and rested it on the nightstand. In that brief twenty minute encounter, I came out with the last scene and sentence of my novel. Time well spent. Childish games played in the wee hours of the morning will fuel my writing for a very long time.