Big hailstorm blew in yesterday afternoon. Trees denuded, flowers crushed, windows broken throughout the neighborhood. At the same time, a construction crew with whining sawzalls was ripping apart the kitchen, prep-work for a long-overdue renovation.
I don’t mind writing through distractions. It’s good discipline. I wouldn’t want to do it all the time, thank you, but the occasional calamity sometimes forces the mind to focus in an unfamiliar way, making for stories with a strange and unexpected tenor.