Crunch time

I am in the Red Room at Salt with a fellow writing student, Katie. The first drafts of our long story are due tomorrow, at high noon, as a desperado from the Old West might say. I'm feeling a little bit desperate right now. Do I have enough information? Enough interviews? Am I going to hit the word count, 3,000 words?

"Oh, I'm going to hit, it's just what I hit it with," Katie says. She says that our writing teacher, Colin, is going to have to take 3,500 words and deal.

Before I came to Salt, I was a freelance newspaper writer for one year. I wrote stories a lot, and it came naturally to me. The words flowed. I haven't written a story since I came here in February. Staring at the page, it's like I've forgotten. Where do I start?

By: Amanda, writing.