Besides being a writer, I’m a teacher. Sometimes those two facts collide. Like yesterday.

It was at the beginning of the high school-wide parent-teacher conference when I was sitting at my desk minding my own business. A colleague, who is in charge of the forensics team, came to me with an urgent request: could I write a duet acting script for a pair of students who desperately needed one? And by the way, could I do it quickly and could I have it published since the script for competition needs to be published?

I thought for a second. Why not? Yes, I’ll do it. This is, after all, the age for speed writing and speed publishing. I told her I would give it some thought and see if I could come up with a suitable idea to fit those two particular students, whom I knew well.

As a few parents came and went from my desk, my mind kept focused on a possible idea. I clicked into an old ideas file and browsed for a second. One in particular stood out to me, it was called GeneRations. I clicked on the file and saw a few ideas that I had about writing a short play on that topic. The ideas didn’t seem suitable. But the phrase GeneRations kept reverberating in my brain until after a few minutes, I had a simple scenario from which to start writing.

That’s it for me. Once the idea comes, it’s all Niagara Falls. And so I started pounding away at the keys as the dialogue flowed freely back and forth between my imaginary characters being written for two real students. I stopped from time to time to talk with some parents, and within an hour and a half of being asked, I walked up to my colleague and told her it was nearly finished. She asked what was finished. I said the script she requested. Her eyes lit up. I told her I’d polish it a little after school and send it to her for approval.

That evening, she told me that she loved it.

Now for the speed publishing. I plopped it into Scrivener, did some formatting, and had an ebook sample within minutes.

Now to Amazon. Got into my Kindle publishing account, set up the details and … oh … wait! Book cover!

OK. Quick. I brought up publisher and scanned through my photos from the past summer in America. I happened upon a photo I took from the 911 Memorial Museum in NYC. It was a wall that was made from pieces of chipped metal from the Twin Towers. It’s just a cool looking textured background. I recolored it, added the title and a new pen name that I use for short scripts, uploaded to Amazon and done!

The work is officially published and now eligible to be used in the local forensics competition.

What a fun and rewarding afternoon of creativity! I wish I could do that everyday. Writing and publishing a piece within 24 hours.

This is a pretty cool era in which to be a writer!