The plan was to be asleep by 9 and be up at 5am to write.
I hadn’t figured on the people who like to roam hotel corridors at all hours and talk about boring things RATHER LOUDLY. Oh, and SLAM DOORS. They woke me up so many times I lost count. (But thanks to several trusty alarms, I got up on time and jumped right back into the pages.)
They weren’t the only busy creatures last night. There is a baby in the room next to me. The kind of baby who is feeling a little stressed by the hotel and the LOUD PEOPLE and the price of gas and lack of affordable health care and itch of a damp diaper. The baby cried a lot. And some loving person talked to her and held her and played the flute to calm her down. So it was an interesting night’s sleep. And it gave me this writing prompt.
Imagine you are in a hotel room, alone. You can’t sleep because of the snatches of conversation and activity you hear in the hall and in the rooms next to yours, above you and below you. You find yourself looking out the peep hole, and pressing your ears to the walls for more details. (Don’t press your ears to the floor. The carpet looks a little skeevey.) Write down what you hear, and what you imagine is going on. Bonus points: turn your raw material into a poem or a short story.