The wood between worlds

Ten points to anyone who figures out the allusion referenced in the title. Don't ask me where you can use the points, though!

Normally, I write my blog in class. Today's Tuesday, so no class. Yet, here I am. I'm in one of those places where I don't know quite what to feel. As though my feelings need definition or permission to come out. How presumptuous of me to think so! I should be tired... and I am, but not mind-numbingly exhausted, though I think I should be. I'm still on my routine -- observing classroom behavior, going to work, coming home. Schoolwork fits in there somewhere, but there's no defined space. Days are long. So why am I still awake? Maybe because instead of blogging, I wrote a few paragraphs on the new manuscript.

A few paragraphs on bell-ringing. Almost in a Pavlovian sense, in that when a bell sounds, we expect to move. Perhaps to a new thing or whatever. We American students of a certain age equate that happy buzz with getting to the next class. We know we have mere minutes to get from point A to point B. Every step is calculated -- down to the potty break between classes. The snaking tentacles of that noise touches teachers too. A new set of faces and the drama that accompanies change. In my story, the bell is for the teachers. It never sounds when students are in school because these students are la creme de la creme and don't need anything as trite as a bell to signal them to move on. I don't know if this is going to remain an element in my book, but it's there today. For my heroine, it's a signal of mounting discontent -- a signal that she needs change. A theme, if you will. Mind you, she's never been afraid of change but it was much easier to roll with the punches when she wasn't under her mom's watchful eye.

Let's recap. So far, I've told you it's a multi-cultural cast with a drop dead sexy implant from England. They work at a posh school in C-Springs, as some of my dear co-workers call my new hometown. And there's a murder. I'm excited and nervous about where these folks will take me. I want to write so bad, but in my scant snatches of time that's just not possible. Yes, I know I could be writing that now instead of the blog but that takes more mental power than I have at the moment.

My question to you, dear readers is what is your bell? What is your signal to move onward and upward? And how do you respond to the buzz? Does it niggle at you and create a stirring of resentment or do you formulate a plan to use that few minutes between classes to do something productive? Inquiring minds and all...