Motivation to write from where you least expect it

Sometimes finding the motivation to write comes from sources you would not expect.

In the past when I wrote, I checked myself into the luxurious Hyatt and spent the weekend enjoying room service and the occasional single malt in the lobby bar.  With the economy being what it is, I decided that my last retreat would be a bit more economical.  My sister’s tenants had just moved out, leaving the small bungalow on the west side of town vacant.  I did my last writing retreat there in the vacant rent house.

Stocked with a card table, a folding chair and some snacks, I set up shop in the empty house.  I had electricity to power my laptop and a fridge for my beer.  I set an inflatable mattress in the back bedroom.  As I settled in, I appreciated the solitude.  The silence was wonderful.  An empty house leaves very little room for distractions. 

Actually, there was a lingering thing to think about.  My parents bought the house when I was about a year old.  We lived there for about five years.  They bought the house from a distraught family - distraught because someone had died in the house under terrible circumstance.

It is the terrible circumstance point that most people pay attention to.  The gentleman who died in the house was a semi-invalid.  One night while making a snack at the gas stove, his robes touched the flame.  The rest I will leave out, in respect for the man.  Needless to say, they found his remains on the kitchen floor the next day.

Now I have to admit right now that I do not believe in ghosts.  I am an educated man and I pride myself on being able to find a reasonable explanation for just about everything in life.  However, many people who have stayed in the house for a period of time have their own odd stories to tell.  As a person who does not believe in ghosts, I did not give it much thought.

At about midnight, I reached a motivational low and set off for the back room.  I lay on the inflatable mattress and closed my eyes.  I rolled over on to my side and thought about the story I should be writing.  It was around that time I felt a very definite push on my shoulder.  Someone or something had just tried to push me out of bed.

I leapt out of bed thinking perhaps that I had been joined by a rat or raccoon.  I flipped on the light but there was nothing there but an inflatable mattress on the wood floor.  The mattress moved a bit as the air settled.  I watched it squirm for a moment and thought if I did not know better, it would have looked like something was moving the bed.

Of course, there was not.  I examined the mattress and realized that when weight is applied to one side, air is forced to other, which at times causes the indentions in the mattress on the other side to expand, and pop out.  The push on my shoulder was not a ghostly presence trying to wake me up.  It was an air pocket in a mattress that rapidly extended and pushed on my shoulder in response to my shifting weight.

At least, that is what I told myself. 

I was wide-awake so I went back to my card table.  With a fully illuminated house, I wrote for another three hours.  In the end, I was really pleased with the additional material I wrote.  It goes to show that you never can tell where your next source of motivation can come from.