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 182: Either way she suspected it wouldn’t involve Westport.
Either way she suspected it wouldn’t involve Westport. In a strange way Gwen felt the untethered feeling she had at the beginning of the summer. This time it was a hopeful feeling. She wasn’t being forcibly ejected from her former life so much as choosing to leave to start a new one.
“Perception,” she muttered to herself as she put items in her cart. There were a few things she knew would be helpful on a long road trip and a few of the items she found were things that would simply be helpful at her grandparents’ house. She knew she could probably get her grandmother to take her to shops where the items were located, but Gwen knew the stores here and felt good about shopping on her own. She felt a little guilty at first knowing how much her grandmother was looking forward to shopping.
‘But those are for things like winter clothes which I’ll have to pick up there and later in the season,’ Gwen told herself. These were small things, like drawer inserts for the bathroom vanity to keep things organized. While the bathroom at her grandparent’s was larger than the one she had here, the vanity top was a sink with a long empty countertop and the drawers were just large open drawers. Gwen had the feeling it was used as a guest room and not put into regular daily use.
The items she was picking up were small things that would make the daily use just a little bit easier and a little more organized. While she didn’t have a ton of products, she liked to keep them neat and not rolling around loose in the drawer. Gwen found that not only did they get banged up more that way but invariably the smaller items would somehow roll to the back and bottom of the drawer so she would almost have to empty it just to find smaller items when she needed them.
Gwen hated the feeling of rummaging. ‘Especially when all I need is a lip balm.’
While Gwen didn’t wear makeup to her cooking classes she did notice her lips drying out as she worked and liked to have a lip balm on hand post class to rehydrate them. Spending twenty minutes trying to dig one out of the bottom of the drawer because the one she was using was now used up was not a peasant addition to her morning.
‘Although, I will need more lip balm too,’ she told herself. It always seemed that she lost half of the lip balms she bought. If she bought a four pack she would somehow lose two possibly even three from the pack and only use what she found. It had always been that way and Gwen half expected that when she emptied her bathroom vanity here, she would find a life time’s worth of used lip balms.
‘But they weren’t there,’ she told herself as she reached the appropriate aisle. ‘I suppose I lose them other places.’ She wondered if everyone was the same and if so where the lip balms went. As she turned the corner the thought left her as she saw Mrs. Lewis.
Ten til Midnight 