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 99: Sophie checked her e-mail to make sure there wasn’t a meeting she was supposed to attend.
Sophie checked her e-mail to make sure there wasn’t a meeting she was supposed to attend. ‘If there is a meeting, I am not invited,’ Sophie thought looking at her e-mail. There was no e-mail stating she needed to be anywhere but in her cubicle for the rest of the day.
‘And Elizabeth said it was a reorganizational meeting,’ she thought. ‘I’ve already been reorganized.’
With that thought in mind she turned on a podcast and got back to her files. If someone wanted her at the meeting she was certain another e-mail would come through or someone would be sent to tell her after realizing she missed the earlier e-mail.
‘But I am not holding my breath,’ she decided. From what she heard the meeting only affected her because she was in the same space as the others. She tried to let thoughts of it go, but had to admit that when she hard movement, she turned the volume down on her podcast. The movement was just Evers’ office door opening and all of the others heading towards the conference room down the hall.
Sophie’s previous supervisor used the conference room for once a month staff meetings, but Evers never used it. ‘It’s probably seen more use in the last few months than it has in years,’ she realized.
While there was the sound of people moving and hen the sound of the conference door closing behind them, Sophie heard nothing else. She shrugged, turned up her podcast and returned to her work. As she worked she forgot about the others and just continued with her input of the files in her accounts. As she told Elizabeth as the databases were becoming more familiar, her speed was increasing with most of them.
‘Except for Peterson,’ she thought. ‘That will always be slow unless they revamp their system.’
It was as she was finishing the last of the current Peterson file that she heard movement outside her cubicle again and thought the meeting might have broken up. She looked to her podcast.
‘You know you shouldn’t eavesdrop,’ she told herself. It didn’t help. Sophie found herself hitting pause instead of dropping the volume. She could practically hear her mother tisk in her head, but couldn’t stop herself from listening in.
“This is so crazy, right,” Ryan said. “Don’s not our supervisor anymore.”
“It sucks,” Kristen replied. “Our new supervisor won’t be any fun at all.”
“At least no one was fired,” Carrie said. “I really don’t want to look for work somewhere else even if I do have a new supervisor.”
Even on the other side of the wall, Sophie could hear Kristen snort. “Don’t try to pretend like you are upset that Don’s not your supervisor anymore,” Kristen said. “We all know he dumped you.”
Ten til Midnight 