August looked at the time on his monitor. 11:17. No, 11:18. There were 42 all-too-short minutes until midnight and he hadn’t yet started his story for the day.

It was far too late to write a piece of historical fiction as intended. The research simply took far too long for the—he looked at the time again—40 minutes remaining until June 7. There was nothing for it: he’d have to wing a ‘stream of consciousness’ story. He threw words at the page.

At least the dog wasn’t demanding attention.

A quiet bing announced the arrival of email which August was notoriously unable to ignore. It was another delay in getting the story completed.

Returning from the email, August proof read what he had written so far. The third paragraph started off poorly and he removed its first sentence.

Another time check revealed that only 31 minutes remained. He typed furiously. Suddenly, he found himself blowing past the character limit. There was no longer any question that he was going to have to edit.