The other day I set aside the novel to try to work up a short story for a competition that closes soon.  I had my idea, a character, a cup of coffee, and was merrily typing away.  But then something terrible happened.

I was writing dialogue.

I picked up my laptop and waved it agitatedly* in front of the boy, who was very quietly and without complaint tweaking the code for this website.

‘I’m writing dialogue!’

It took him a while to realise that this was a Bad Thing.

‘Dialogue,’ he said, in that parrot-y way of someone who has no idea what you’re raving about and therefore you should explain yourself, you silly thing.

‘Yes, dialogue!  My short stories don’t have dialogue!  My short stories don’t even have plot!’

‘Are you writing another–’

‘Novel?  Yes?  Maybe?  I don’t know!’

And now the novels are everywhere.  I have notepads full of ideas, and terrible puns for titles, and characters.  Like coathangers and stockings full of holes, they’re multiplying. . .until, ominously, even this entry contains dialogue.

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*it’s a very small laptop