Here's Ingrid (or Ilsa, as she is called in the film*) looking down from the wall of the restaurant Casablanca, in Harvard Square, where we had dinner last night with friends before going to the theater.

*remember that; it will serve you well in NYT crossword puzzles

From dinner we went to the theater where the new musical called JOHNNY BASEBALL was thoroughly enjoyable. And now (Sunday morning. Yes, I work  on Sundays) I am back at work on the story I mentioned yesterday.

I can't tell you too much about this story or where it will end up (by which I mean where it will be published). But because a number of people have expressed interest in the process, I will describe that I know where the story is headed. My task is creating the 3000 words that will take it there. Yesterday I copied the first paragraph and printed it here on this blog. Here it is again:

"It occurred for the first time in a hospital in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, but no one noticed except a maintenance man shoving a broom down the hall at 3 AM. He was startled by it and drew a quick breath, but he had fallen slightly behind and still had the whole OB/GYN floor to do before he could take a cigarette break. So he looked away, nudged a gum wrapper loose from the metal leg of a molded polyurethane chair by the hall window with his broom bristles, and continued methodically on without saying a word. And within the hour he had forgotten it entirely." 

Today I began to proceed from there, and from the few paragraphs that followed, but first I went back to the opening and did some re-writing. Here is how it now reads:

It occurred for the first time in a hospital in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, but no one noticed except a sleepy maintenance man shoving a push-broom down the hall past the nursery at 3 AM. He was startled by it and drew a quick breath. But he had fallen slightly behind in his work and still had the whole OB/GYN floor to do before he could take a cigarette break. So he looked away, nudged a gum wrapper loose from the metal leg of a molded polyurethane chair by the hall window with his broom bristles, and continued methodically on without saying a word. And within the hour he had forgotten it entirely.

Very small changes. The addition of a word here, a phrase there, and some changed punctuation. Nothing major. But for me, it helps to tweak those small things before I go on. Each day I go back and revise what I've done before going on.  When I reach the end---in 12 pages---then I will re-examine the entire thing. One of the things I look for is whether it begins too slowly, since I  have a tendency to do that: to tiptoe in, instead of plunging.  If so, I will lop off parts of the beginning, and this paragraph may shrink, or disappear completely.

But for now, it remains.