Writing Resources from Fifteen Minutes of Fiction

3:30 in the Morning: Panic Attack in the Dark

As a confirmed procrastinator, I had waited until the night before a big presentation to prepare my part of it. I went to bed late and so exhausted that I was asleep almost before my head hit the pillow. I awoke in the dark, startled with a fear that I'd overslept and I turned over to check the clock on my bedside. What a relief, the red numbers told me was only 3:30 not 6:30 and I could sleep for hours. Since I was awake, I got up, went to the bathroom, and then crawled back into my warm, toasty bed for another three hours of blessed sleep.

My mind drifted as I lay there, I think the Lakers really have a chance this year, I hoped my daughter got an A on a test she would be taking tomorrow, well I guess that would be today, and then I thought about my upcoming day. Dress to impress my dad use to say, maybe I should wear a suit, no I guess that would be too much, but defiantly my new tie. Wow it's already a quarter to four, I had better get back to sleep; I should have spent more time on my piece, if it's a disaster the boss will be all over me. Why is he always picking on me, I do a great job and yet he still wants more. The heck with it I am going to wear a suit, the brown one, no it's still at the cleaners (why didn't I pick that up yesterday), I'll wear the gray one but my new tie won't go it. I better get to sleep, what time is it, good it's not yet four and I can still get a good two and a half hours.

My closing just doesn't feel right, it could use some more punch, maybe I should rewrite it in the morning. Stop it, the speech is fine, now go to sleep but instead I lie there watching the red semicolon between the 4 and the 03 blink on my clock. My opening is tied so closely to the ending that if I change one I'll have to change the other as well. At least my facts are straight and that is what's most important, what about that one cost overrun projection, I hope no one asks about that because it's more a guess than a fact.

I can see that I'm never going back to sleep so I get up and go to the den to look once again over my speech. That is where my wife found me the next morning, asleep with my head on my laptop and my screen blinking an error code, thank god I had already downloaded what I wrote the night before. I got to work tired and unprepared; dreading what was about to happen to my career only to find the customer had canceled the meeting.

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