Is It Right to Write All Night?

For the "I Love Writing Day" prompt

Jack felt the crunch of frozen rain under his feet as he walked the short distance to his car at the Sho-Me garden apartments, treading carefully on the slippery sidewalk and avoiding the rain-filled potholes in the parking lot. On cold, threatening nights like this, he gave himself extra time for the short drive from Raytown, MO, to his third-shift job as the security guard at the Weidenhammer Paper Company in Independence, MO. As he waited for the heater in his 2012 Dodge Caravan to melt the ice on the windshield, he promised himself, yet again, that when he published his novel, he would move to a place with a heated garage.

Chuck, the second-shift guard, was breathing heavily when he finally unlocked the door, a clue that he had slept through his shift and had raced through the plant at the last minute, scanning his ID at each security checkpoint. On his first walk-through, Jack wondered why Chuck would screw up and risk losing a piece-of-cake job that paid a decent wage, provided health insurance, required almost no work, leaving Jack hours to write or study.

Time to write wasn’t Jack’s problem, although you might think so. In addition to his full-time security job, Jack worked part-time in the morning at the Raytown branch of the Mid-Continent Public Library, where he shelved returned books and worked the customer service desk. In the afternoon, he enrolled in two classes each semester at UMKC, where his official major was Business with frequent diversions in History, Literature, and Writing.

And, of course, there was his roommate Rachel. Their relationship was almost platonic. He paid the rent and expenses, and she cooked and kept him warm at night. She was a full-time student, and both found their arrangement convenient.

Jack had time to write at night. He thought about writing at the library and had ready access to research. On campus, he studied writing and gave and received writing advice. He had inspiration. He had stories to tell! But he lacked confidence, and his head was bloody from hitting that stone wall repeatedly.

He had several unfinished novels gathering dust, fading away, that had ground to a halt with the worst tragedy of all: “What happens next”?

Jack’s latest inspiration is a story he tentatively titled “Staying Out of the Rain”. The main character is a half-African-American, half-American Indian girl who lives in rural Kansas. He begins the story by introducing her:

“I would like to hang out with friends on campus in the afternoon, but I have a long drive home and work. When friends say, "Oh yeah, where do you work?" I tell them I, "Work in retail." I don't mention that I'm the night clerk at Junior's Adult Video store. Junior, actually, Uncle Junior, is my Dad Jason's older brother. Junior had the dark good looks and physique of a classic Hollywood Indian brave combined with the brains and charisma that destined him to become a leader. He fought his way to glory on the football field and on to a football scholarship at the University of Kansas. His dreams were crushed one night when his motorcycle was T-boned by a grain truck on I-70. After a long recovery and an even longer battle with depression, Junior used his settlement to buy a defunct video store and rebrand it for adult entertainment. I started working there when I was sixteen. At first, Junior wanted me to dress like a kid because he thought that would appeal to his more pervy customers. Instead, I refused and developed a hard edge and a snappy comeback for every crude remark you can imagine. When some sleazeball suggested that he take me back to his trailer and show me "how it's done," I would smile demurely and reply, "If you're so good, why are you in here buying dirty movies?" In the end, despite being half-black and half-Indian, the fact that I'm cute was enough to keep the customers coming back.”

Jack couldn’t decide whether to stay in the present tense and continue with his main character’s story or dip into the past to explain the events that placed this girl in Kansas.

“You're probably not surprised that I'm half Indian, this being Kansas and all, but where did the half-black come in since the whole town of just under 1400 is like 96% white? It's a long story; interesting, but mostly sad.

Let's start with my grandparents. My Grandmother, Helen (Grams), came to Brooklyn from Jamaica. No, not next door in Queens, Jamaica, the island. She left the island to find work as a domestic in Brooklyn to escape the life-draining poverty and the pursuits of a man her father’s age, whom she would have been forced to marry. She worked for the same Jewish lady for forty years, cooking and cleaning and waiting on the woman's fat, insolent children and grandchildren, retiring finally due to ill health on pennies of social security. Grams stood tall to the end. At 5'3". She was fit and trim, almost too thin; her hair was tightly permed, and her uniform was crisp and freshly starched. Helen never lost her proper British accent, never let her voice or her manner become infected by all that was coarse and crude in Brooklyn.”

Jack became fascinated by the back story and wrote chapter after chapter that finally led back to the present, but then he stalled. Where is the real story? Is it about the present-day girl with a whole life ahead of her, or is it her family history?