The Fifteen Minute Novel is a novel written fifteen minutes at a time with each week day’s section starting with the sentence from the previous day. At least it is attempting to be a novel. For now I am just aiming at one continuous story, worked on for fifteen minutes each day. Started Friday January 1st, 2021 (in case you want to search for the beginning. I can’t wait to see where it ends up. It could be good, or it could be a mess. We’ll have to see. For now, here is today’s fifteen minutes.
Day 186: His daily life began to fall into a pattern.
His daily life began to fall into a pattern. He woke early and went to the club for a swim. Then he came home and got ready for work. He went to the office and at lunch chatted about the television shows everyone was watching. After work he attempted some sort of simple culinary creation, unpacked a few boxes, made his lunch for the following day and watched a couple of episodes of the show the office was discussing.
By Friday, James felt comfortable with the rhythm and was no longer as sore as he had been at the beginning of the week. His number of laps had not increased as rapidly as he hoped, but the lower amount of soreness in his body from the exertions made him feel marginally better about his efforts.
Towards the end of the work day, James managed to catch Mike in the hallway.
“I’m going to have to duck out of happy hour tonight,” James told him.
Mike nodded. “Still settling in?”
“Yeah,” James said nodding ruefully. “It’s taking longer than I thought it would.”
Mike smiled. “Let me guess you haven’t moved on your own since college?”
“Something like that.”
“More stuff now, and no one to help unpack it,” Mike said. “Plus there’s work. After my divorce it took me a month to actually settle into my new place. And even then I kept finding out there were things I needed, thought I had but found out I didn’t.”
James agreed and they parted. James returned to his office pleased that he not only had an excuse for this week, but might be able to use it for a few following weeks. Even though he managed to find a swimming pool, he hadn’t worked out any other happy hour dodging plans.
“Maybe I’ll work on that this weekend,” he thought. Other than swimming, James hadn’t really thought about what he might do over the weekend. As he opened up the file he needed to work with on the computer he realized that he had deliberately not made any weekend plans. Thus far, there were few weekends where something or other hadn’t been arranged for him. First he was asked to look at files and then he had to hide from people or move or dodge faux cable men. He hadn’t seen even a whisper of Tucker this week. He heard nothing of Morris and thus far no one attacked him.
James wondered if he would actually end up with a weekend all to himself after all. ‘I really do need to unpack more,’ he thought.
At the end of the day, he left the office and instead of attempting any culinary adventure he rewarded himself with something from the soup and sandwich place. “After all I managed Spaghetti and a Denver omelet this week.”
When James arrived home he half expected someone to be waiting for him. He was pleased to find his driveway empty. “I just might get a weekend after all.”
Ten til Midnight 