The Fifteen Minute Novel is an attempt to take a single prompt and use the last sentence written each day as a start for the next day. This year I had several prompts circling around a similar story, so I have combined them. However, the story starts the same way each day, with the last line from the day before and a timer set for fifteen minutes. The hope is to end up with a complete, if very rough draft by the end of the year. Some stories are better than others, but I always learn a whole lot about my own writing when I do this so for me it is not only a nice way to work out a story, but it is a tool for helping my writing get better. And so, we continue this story for 2024 with…
Day 5: Her large living room held everything she wanted in a living space and the two bedrooms and one large bath were enough space for her to feel comfortable.
Her large living room held everything she wanted and the two bedrooms and one large bath were enough space for her to feel comfortable. Sophie felt she had enough space to do what she wanted and not too much to take care of. The fact that she used one bedroom for herself and let her hobby take over the other one worked out perfectly for her. There was even a gym in their apartment complex should she ever have time to take advantage of it.
Deciding tonight she was too tired to bother cooking and too hungry from skipping lunch to just eat her left over lunch, she called in an order from the local Chinese restaurant. She knew there would not only be enough food in her order to eat her fill tonight, but the leftovers would work well for her main meal the following day.
‘Which means I won’t have to worry about food until I get groceries.’
With the order placed, Sophie went to change into something comfortable. She removed her work clothes and put them in the pile of clothes to be washed. The closet in the second bedroom was smaller because half of the closet in there was taken up with a stacked washer and dryer.
‘In the morning,’ she promised her laundry. Sophie pulled open the top drawer and took out a pair of loose lounge pants and a top to go with them. They were of the softest cotton and had only a small band of decorative embroidery along the cuffs of the pants. While she often put far more elaborate embroidery on her pieces, for her own pajamas she wanted something light and delicate to go along with the soft cotton she managed to find at the fabric store.
While they moved around a lot for her father’s work, Sophie’s mother worked as a seamstress and taught Sophie to sew at a young age. It was a skill she could employ in almost every place they lived, her mother able to get a job no matter where their father’s work took them, even if sometimes she just worked from home. Sophie took to sewing like a duck to water. She had a love of fabrics and once she learned to both use and make patterns, very quickly realized that she could replicate many of the designs she saw in the high-end fashion magazines.
Slowly she built up her wardrobe, even if she couldn’t afford the luxury prices. It didn’t take her long before she started creating her own designs in addition to replicating the ones from the magazines. She also made sure to locate the best sources for luxury fabrics no matter where they lived and had accounts with each of the reputable on-line suppliers as well.
When she was younger, she thought she might want to go into the fashion industry, but Sophie very quickly realized it was not really a world she wanted. She loved crafting her own designs and replicating those she saw in the magazines, but she knew that her designs had their limits. She favored wearable designs and wasn’t as bold or dramatic as she suspected she would need to be to earn a place in the fashion world.
In addition, there wasn’t really money for a fashion degree. Sophie did her two years at a community college to build up her work skills and then went into the world of cubicles. In her spare time, she took every on-line class she could on fashion and related topics and had shelves with books on both design and the history of design and textiles. She did her best to add any sort of textile related skill she could to her repertoire adding practical skills from embroidery and knitting to tatted lace and batik dying.
Sophie made most of her clothes herself as she experimented with cut and cloth, the more tame designs being worn to the office. While she designed some more elaborate dresses, they mostly went to her friend Janine. Janine owned a boutique and often sold items on commission. She had both a physical and an on-line store. At the moment Janine made more from the on-line fashions than she did from the bricks and mortar store and was contemplating giving up the physical space and working solely from an on-line platform.
Sophie regularly produced luxury pajama sets and dressing gowns for the site. The items Sophie felt like making were placed on the site and usually sold well, Janine taking a small commission for them. It let her make the items she wanted even if she knew she had no place to wear them. Occasionally Sophie took special commission projects in addition to the sleepwear line she provided for the site.
Ten til Midnight 