Welcome to the Fifteen Minute Novel. Each morning I spend fifteen minutes writing on a singular story line. Each morning starts with the last line of the previous day. The goal is to get a (very) rough draft out of the simple story idea and to avoid letting the story idea languish in limbo forever, actually writing it out. This is the third year I have done this writing experiment and each year I learn just a little bit about myself and the way I write as well as creating a framework for the story. But without further ado…
Day 84: To her surprise there was a long list of options.
To her surprise there was a long list of options. The city seemed to boast options ranging from individual classes in specific cuisines, usually given by restaurants serving that cuisine to full-fledged culinary schools.
Gwen scanned the list and found it daunting. ‘Why don’t I just narrow the area first,’ she decided. Gwen narrowed the parameters. She started extremely close, hovering in a few block radius of her grandparent’s building. Surprisingly there were two possibilities. One that taught traditional German food and one that looked like a pastry class.
As Gwen decided that she wanted to learn more general skills than the recipes of a specific cuisine, she marked off the German restaurant. Knowing nothing about pastries other than that they were sweet and delicious, Gwen went to the website of the pastry class. She noted that the intro to pasty was the upcoming class but soon other classes would start. They seemed to focus on baked goods ranging from celebration pastries to cake decorating and even to bread making.
‘That could be fun,” Gwen thought. She marked it as a possibility on her notebook. Having exhausted all of the possibilities, Gwen expanded her search. A list of options appeared. She again eliminated any specific individual cuisine and was left with three cooking schools. These were all of the savory type and a couple seemed designed to train students for a career in the culinary arts. One seemed more like it was just a general cooking school. Gwen went to their website and scrolled through the available classes. They seemed more like they were what she was looking for. The classes seemed to teach the basics to someone who wanted to learn to cook for themselves. There were options for training in the culinary arts but there were still basic classes she could take.
Feeling pleased with herself, she made a note of the school. She then looked on the paper map that her grandmother gave her and to her delight was able to find both places on the map. They were within walking distance of the apartment so she wouldn’t need Sebastian or to immediately figure out the public transportation system to get there.
‘Which eliminates some problems.’
Gwen was pleased at having to possible options to check into and set the map and her laptop aside. For now they were only possibilities but perhaps soon she could go look at them in person and see if they were things she could try out over the summer. Gwen thought about looking up art classes but as her grandmother seemed most excited about that option, Gwen decided she would see what she came up with for that.
She stifled a yawn and realized that while she might just be getting used to the time change, she still got up early and would need to get to bed soon so she could be ready in the morning.
‘Can’t keep Alan waiting,’ she told herself.
Ten til Midnight 