I conceived of an idea for a short story yesterday afternoon, after work, so a little before three p.m. I knew nothing about it, just what a vivid image of two characters, dressed a certain way, doing something. As I typed, I figured it out as the story went on tangents with unexpected details. I reached the point of that initial image two hours later, and my brain had fogged up. I needed to clear out my cookies, so I went for a walk. When I came back, I drew the two main characters as they appeared in my head earlier. (Relax, I didn’t paint them until this morning.)

I go to bed super-early because I wake up at an ungodly hour. If I was going to have dinner and watch a show I love before passing out, I needed to quit. But I didn’t; I fulfilled the promise that flash in my mind had created, and I went to bed two hours late. I finished the art and did a pass through the story, and I feel mighty.

But I also feel really sad.

Through this discovery, I got intimate with Cora and Graham. As if getting to know a real person, their personalities and their interests revealed themselves to me. (Cora’s favorite Evil Dead movie is the first one, for the schlock. Graham was raised by his dad’s eighties cartoons.) Now that I’m done with them, I file the pictures in my art folder, the story in my writing folder, and they’re gone. This always happens to me. I fall in love with my characters. I suspect I’m not the only one.