For the past two weeks, I’ve been writing assiduously on a new Clairefontaine notebook with a fountain pen.  I do get hand cramps after a couple of hours, but the process is exciting.  Every morning, I seem to look forward to learning what my characters are going to do next, how they’ll proceed with what life throws at them.  Here’s a transcription of a paragraph, just to prove it exists.  It really is a first draft, which plows through the story and defines the characters, the scenes, what happen to them, their history, and where they’re going to end up.  A second draft will probably be entirely new.

“… That’s him on the photos there,” he said, designating the photos on the wall behind the computer.
“You guys were cute,” said Marc.
“Yeah,” Peter said, thinking of the past tense in “were cute.”  He paused in his work, his hands supporting him on the table, looking at the back of the frame, having one of his moments, as he called it.  At the beginning, those moments came at any time of the day or night, on the street, at a store, on a bus, whenever.  Over time, their frequency and intensity reduced, but they’d still come at unexpected times when he’d talk about those days, or just when he thought of something, a scene in a movie, or even a song he’d hear.