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 149: With only a little bit left to finish on the final piece for her collection, there was no way Sophie planned to stay late.
With only a little bit left to finish on the final piece for her collection, there was no way Sophie planned to stay late. Sophie put on a podcast and got to work. She worked steadily throughout the morning and felt she was in a really good place by the time she broke for lunch.
When she did break for lunch, Sophie set her ear buds to the side, took out her lunch and pulled up the electronic employee manual. As she ate her sandwich, she flipped through the electronic pages. She was relieved to learn that there were very specific rules regarding firing.
‘Even if I was found to be involved with anything untoward they would have to go through a series of things before they actually fired me,’ she say. It was comforting to know. While Sophie didn’t have any plans to leave, if she did leave full time employment to strike out on her own or take up a position at another company, she wanted it to be her call instead of something she had to unexpectedly adapt to.
‘But I think Kristen, Ryan and Evers all meet a bunch of requirements,’ she thought. ‘Unless things have changed.’ Sophie shrugged. After she left they could have all gotten off probation for al she knew. Most of the gossip she heard about her former coworkers involved their rather scandalous love lives. The folks in HR and accounts would gossip about that, but none of them mentioned anything related to their actual work or potential probationary status.
‘I suppose that is professional,’ Sophie thought with some amusement. She closed the manual and checked her e-mail. As there was nothing pressing, she finished her lunch, wiped off her hands with one of the wet wipes from the box she kept in the drawer and got back to work.
At one, the computer dinged a reminder to let he know she had her regularly scheduled appointment upstairs with her supervisor. It felt strange turning off the alarm and then remaining at her desk. ‘But the meeting is cancelled.’
Sophie looked at the relatively short stack of files left to complete or the day. She knew she could finish them well before the day was out, however, she wasn’t sure that spending the last part of the day not being seen to be productive was the right thing to do at the moment.
‘I can always set up the start of things for next week,’ she thought.
As expected the last few files went quickly. By three she was done with her work for the week. ‘It’s the high energy of the rest of the office and the fact that I replaced my podcasts with one of Janine’s play lists. Those always made her feel like moving at warp speed.
Given that she was done, Sophie put on one of the podcasts that she usually couldn’t listen to at work. it was in Italian, but one of the presenters had a slightly different accent than the others and she found when he spoke, she had to pay a little extra attention. He also tended to use idioms she was unfamiliar with and Sophie always found herself jotting them down to look up later.
‘But if I am just getting a head start on Monday, I can go slower.’ Sophie made certain she had a note pad and pen handy. Not wanting her language lessons to get mixed in with work, she used a notebook from home so that it wouldn’t accidentally get mixed up. With the notepad in place, she turned the podcast on and began setting up the files for the following week.
Ten til Midnight 