Second draft is done and the story is in much better shape. A lot of the work was done on long haul flights to and from the UK. It was uncomfortable but surprisingly productive.
Unfortunately I became an even worse passenger than normal. I was so determined to make full use of the dead time in the air, that I became even more intolerant of other human beings than ususal.
On the return leg from Dubai to Brisbane, I was assigned a middle seat, squished up against another large man. I’m a biggish bloke too, so two substantial men pressed up against each other in tiny economy seating was never going to be great, but I wriggled and sighed so much that my seating partner moved. He convinced the cabin crew to find him alternative seating, far far away from me.
They say that crime doesn’t pay, but it appears that bad tempered passive aggression does. My ill grace was rewarded by an empty seat next to me for the rest of the fourteen hour flight, and the second draft edit could continue undisturbed.
I’m not proud of myself of course, but I would have been even less proud of myself if I had murdered the man while we were flying over the Indian Ocean. So it all worked out for the best, even though I was very far away from my best self.
Photo by Arnaud Weyts on Unsplash
