Inspired or expelled?

I can honestly say that what happened to me on Friday was fairly unique.

I was reading a newspaper review of a play, and suddenly, the idea for a 4-character play popped into my head. I thought, "Oh, that's interesting. I'd better write that down." It's something I've gotten into the habit of with the blog. I'll think of some idea that could be a decent post, and I'll jot it down, because I've got a memory like a sieve, that's been used for target practice.

So, I pulled out my notebook, and wrote down those 4 characters. Then, a fifth kind of appeared on the page. Then the opening lines. Then, more. After about an hour of writing I thought, "Well, I'll run out of stuff here in a minute." But little bits and bobs kept popping into my head. And I'd write to a place where I could work that in. And at some point, I wrote a line and thought, "Oh, I wonder what Jan will say about that." And then she said something back. And I was surprised. I don't think those words were in my head before they appeared on that paper. Where the heck did that come from?

Looking back at it, I can see stuff that I've read, stuff that I've seen, stuff that I've wondered about and people I've known. But it's all kind of stewed up, from a pot that I didn't even know was on the stove. And three hours in, I had a one-act play.

I've never written a play before. I've never thought about writing a play before. I've written bad short stories and ghastly poetry. But I would have said the 3 paragraph blog is my oeuvre. I'm shockingly lazy. The 90-second rant about Project Runway would seem to be about all I have the oomph for. 17 pages of dialogue would have seemed to be beyond my scope.

But there it is. I'm not sure how or why. But I can't deny its existence. And I also can't vouch for its quality. I have absolutely no experience with having produced something that can't be read in the space of time you could drink a small cup of coffee. So I'm going to let it sit in a drawer and macerate a bit. Of course, I also don't have any experience with writing anything that's not a blog (or, if I'm not too ashamed to admit it, really ghastly, poetry that should be treated like a fart in an elevator - embarassing, toxic and will hopefully dissipate unmentioned). Whether what showed up on my desk on Friday is a nice little piece of coffee cake, or a fart, only time will tell.