Beach Work

Check off beach reading for the day. My book, tucked away next to the tube of sunblock, requires that I put on my readers, under my sunglasses--a very uncool look that doesn't work very well anyway. It's one lens too many. I've finished my traditional miniature beach village built of natural materials littering the sand. This year, it's just a simple fort constructed of smelly, stacked reeds surrounded by a moat. A gull feather and a grass frond decorate the entrance (though there is an impressive shark trap in the rear that might provide the tiny beach people with meat for the rest of the summer). Once our son and his family arrive we'll create something much more vast and impressive. So, with an hour or more of collagen destroying sunshine left, I've decided to work in the shade of my umbrella. The work is around the same issue that always plagues me when I'm considering a new project. I can get hightly motivated by my chosen setting, era, and general story line. But until I get a bead on my main character and what it is they want, I'm fighting the undertoe. So I've decided to study my fellow beachbums, all of whom suddenly appear to be packing up and leaving. It seems the beach patrol is ordering everyone from the water. I can't figure out why until I glance behind myself at the bank of low slung, gun-metal gray clouds that have blown suddenly in from nowhere and appear to be positively filled with electrical charge. As my beach neighbor's straw hat blows past our shark trap, I decide that tomorrow I'm not opening my book until I've found my main character somewhere on this beach and realize what it is they're searching for.