a bit of healthy competition, or maybe not…

I am sitting up in bed typing in the dark, on my new little macbook. I know you are not supposed to have these things on soft furnishings because of the overheating problem, so I went into the garage today and found a piece of hardboard, which is exactly the right size to make a nice little flat surface. Then I have a small tapestry cushion that I made a couple of years ago which also happens to be exactly the right size, so I have a flat hard surface and something to stop leg burn too.
My partner had a go with it for 2 minutes(he said he was too tired to play with it for longer and wanted to go to bed) but he wrote the opening lines of a novel. He who never writes anything except emails and reports for work, and it was one of the most intriguing openings I have ever read. I am so jealous. I asked him if he was going to do nanowrimo, I even dared him, but he said with a grin on his face that he didn’t need to wait until november, that all months were the same to him. I think he was more than mildly surprised at his opening lines, and quite chuffed and rightly so. But now I am wondering if I have opened pandora’s box. I don’t think he would ever have thought of writing fiction of any kind (outside of his reports) if I hadn’t offered to let him test out my new laptop. He said he didn’t know that he was going to write what he did, that it just came out. I assured him( as pooh assured piglet on the way through the hundred acre wood to find tigger some breakfast one morning) that a lot of literary fiction(and poetry) gets written that way(“it’s the best way you know,letting things come” said pooh, “oh, I didn’t know,” said piglet). Anyway, he asked me to save his flash of genius, which I have, I just wonder now whether it will turn into anything. And I wonder too if it might just make him stop and think about why I am so obsessive about what I do, why it is so important. The kick you get out of writing.