Welcome to the ongoing Fifteen Minute Novel experiment. Thus far it is going well, but setting a slow pace. Soon I will have Gwen settled into figuring out a new life and less obsessive about figuring out a new life, which is of course when I can send calamities her way. It took me longer to get here than I planned. Somehow I thought I would be winding down this story line by this point of the year. I am really glad I am not as I think there is much that can be done with Gwen and her story.
I will be skipping tomorrow’s installment because of the Holiday and searching for a new desk top and return on Wednesday. But without any further ado, today’s installment…
Day 131: She opened her sketchpad to a fresh page and began to draw.
She opened her sketchpad to a fresh page and began to draw. She started with doodles , just getting the feel of the pencil in her hands. Then she started to sketch out people. She drew small faces across the page. She sketched out Mrs. Lewis and Mr. Lewis and then Lisa. She added Toby. She looked at his face and almost marked it out of her book. She didn’t. She left it and then sketched her grandparents and Michael.
The drawing’s weren’t fabulous and she knew they weren’t the sort she would share with anyone, but she always liked drawing portraits of people. In most of her art classes people went with abstract things and played with colors and textures. It was one of the reasons she knew she would never be an artist. She tended to lean towards realistic drawings of people when left to her own devices to draw. With water colors she almost always drew individual plants in great detail or landscapes.
Lisa always told her that she had a future in creating art for motel rooms. Gwen felt the insult sting.
‘I always thought they looked like botanical illustrations,’ she thought to herself, trying to set the old insult aside. She knew she was not daring enough to be an artist, but she enjoyed how when she drew people she often learned more about them, as though her brain was showing her something that her eyes glossed over when she just looked at them.
‘And I enjoy it,’ Gwen thought. ‘No one said you had to make a career out of every thing you enjoy doing.’
She spent the evening drawing and watching the show play on her laptop. When she was tired enough, Gwen went to sleep.
The next morning she woke up and got dressed for her morning run. Life here was becoming routine and Gwen felt that she was settling in. She went on her morning run and trained for the marathon. She was friendly with those she ran with but they were not going to be people she hung out with. She then came home showered and had breakfast with her grandparents before going off to her baking class. There people started becoming more friendly as they all got to know each other.
Her regular cooking class was much the same although from a savory point of view. In each of the classes she began making friends. In the art class, the others continued to ignore her and Gwen found herself fine with it. She was left alone to practice her drawing skills and they worked on various still lifes as the classes progressed, and finally after a few weeks, they began getting in live models. They were not, as some of the class requested, nude models, but Gwen was fine with that. She liked playing with the shadows and the textures of the cloth of the model’s garments.
Outside of her classes, Gwen often went out with Michael. They were friends, there was nothing romantic about it. Gwen enjoyed spending time with him.
Ten til Midnight 