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 110: As far a personal items went that left her with a travel coffee mug and her somewhat broken and battered water bottle.
As far a personal items went, that left her with a travel coffee mug and her somewhat broken and battered water bottle. Sophie lined them up next to her bag and then unlocked the other large drawer in her desk. Here she kept the stack of files she was in the process of working with. She took them out and stacked them on the desk top. Sophie then turned to peeling the post it notes from her computer monitor. They decorated the bottom edge like fringe.
Most of the post it notes were work related. They were reminders as she worked on the new systems. She used them as memory prompts when working with the new system. Sophie knew in time the details would become habit, but for now the prompts helped. A few of the post it notes were personal ones. A couple held general emotions she was using for her design exercises and a couple held notes to herself. There was one she added two a couple of times as she tried to figure put what she wanted to use the left over peacock silk to create.
‘I doubt IT wants to know about belts, purses and hair ribbons,’ Sophie decided. She stacked the post it notes together and placed them inside the top file. ‘Which just leaves my cardigan.’ Sometimes th3 office got cold when the sun shifted angles to shine on the other side of the building. Sophie kept a cardigan on the back of her chair to use when she felt a chill. Thinking it would be easier to ear, she slipped it on so she wouldn’t have to carry it.
As she stuck her arm in the second sleeve she heard footsteps and looked up to see someone she vaguely recognized step into the opening that served as her cubicle’s doorway. “Sophia Daniels?” he asked.
“That would be me,” she replied.
“Cal from IT,” he said. He reached behind himself and wheeled a cart into view. It had an empty box on it. He icked up the box and handed it to her. “This is for your files and personal items and the cart is for your computer and it’s personal items. If you’d like to load the box we can put it on the cart and take everything up at once.”
“Right Accounts and HR are one floor up,” Sophie recalled. She took the box from Cal and very quickly loaded her things not it. Her bag she slung over her shoulder by it’s strap but she handed the filled box back to Cal.
He set it on the bottom of the cart well out of the way. As the cubicle was too small for both of them to be in the space at the same time, they swapped places, Sophie standing next to the cart and out of the way while Cal began to unplug various cords and connectors.
“Didn’t they tell you where you were going,” Cal asked.
“Just the general area,” Sophie replied. “I figured someone would have more details when I got there.”
“Fair enough,” Cal said. “Well I can tell you that you are moving up in the world,” he told her as he worked. “One floor up to be precise. Plus you have actual walls and a door, which is always nice. It may take a few hours but in the end you will also have a phone. It just takes longer to transfer that than it does for me to physically shift your computer.”
“I see,” Sophie said. On the other side of the cubicle wall, Sophie heard a thump and suspected Kristen too now knew that she was getting an actual office instead of just a cubicle.
Ten til Midnight 