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 93: She moved it in the light to see how light and shadow affected the cloth.
She moved it in the light to see how light and shadow affected the cloth. When Sophie thought she understood the fabric, she set it aside and closed her eyes. She didn’t picture a place where the fabric could be worn, but instead tried to think of a design that would simply show off the fabric t its best advantage.
Thinking of how it moved and shifted in the light, Sophie opened her eyes and began to sketch. Her hand moved with ease, the design flowing onto the page. She didn’t wonder if it was office appropriate or if she would have to make a reservation to wear it. She didn’t tell herself that the item had to be something she had a place to wear it. It was a design for the fabric and not for her to wear in any particular setting.
Time ticked by and by the time Sophie was rubbing her eyes and thinking of sleep, she had the start of something on the page. It had not yet reached the stage where it was officially a thing, but it was the start of something that could become anything. Sophie smiled. ‘And that is not a bad place to leave a drawing when heading to bed.’
Sophie slept well, waking with her alarm. As she ran through her normal morning, moving from workout to shower to breakfast to office, she let the not quite there design flit through her mind. In the office, she gave her polite greetings and retreated to her space. She concentrated on what she needed to do and ignored everything else. It was easy to do as the new accounts demanded her attention. At the end of the day she left. There was no more conversation with Carrie and when Sophie returned home, she dove back in her design.
The week followed the same pattern. On Thursday Petra joined her for lunch and Sophie learned that more accounts were being transferred from Evers and those who he supervised. Petra speculated on what she thought might happen, using Sophie more as a sounding board than anything else. She seemed pleased to have someone to pass gossip to even if Sophie had no gossip to return. A couple of times Sophie was called to answer questions about the accounts she passed on, but that was the only interruption to her normal schedule.
The week ended as quietly as it began. At home Sophie finished her drawing and began another. All of her contracted pieces were done for the month and she even had a few extras ready for the following month. When she needed to think about her designs, she worked on the dressing gowns. Sophie decided that she wasn’t going to make any f her more fanciful creations until she managed to complete the order for the dressing gowns.
As the designs were different from her usual things, she didn’t mind and wanted to let them marinate in her mind before she started thinking about moving the designs into the pattern stages. For now she was happy to simply alternate between drawing and working on the dressing gowns. ‘Besides,’ She thought. ‘I don’t know which design I like more.’
Ten til Midnight 