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 163: Sophie found she wasn’t entirely certain how she felt about that.
Sophie found she wasn’t entirely certain how she felt about that. There was a part of Sophie that didn’t want to go back. ‘But I need to work,’ she told herself. The garments were shipped off and thus far cost he to make, but hadn’t been sold so there was no profit. The interviews she went on seemed to go okay, but there were no call backs or job offers.
‘And it would probably be best to move past the administrative leave.’ She decided. Still she found herself more reluctant to go into the office than usual as she finished her workout, showered , dressed and drove to the office.
“Welcome back,” Petra said as she entered the office.
“Did you have a nice vacation?” Linda asked.
“It was productive,” Sophie replied as she went to her office. She smiled politely and wondered if they knew she was on administrative leave. She expected a much since they were part off both HR and accounts. ‘I wonder if I will ever get to use my actual vacation time,’ Sophie thought as she settled back at her desk to begin her day. The office had a slightly disused scent to it. As Sophie logged into the computer and brought up her e-mail, she saw the first message was from Elizabeth. Sophie sighed and felt annoyance more than nerves. She clicked open the e-mail. As she read, Sophie snorted in amusement and looked around to see if anyone noticed. No one did and she turned back to the computer.
Apparently with her gone there was no one to do her work. Elizabeth tried but as she was unfamiliar with the databases she had not managed to get very much done and so Sophie now had a back log. The e-mail asked that Sophie work through it as quickly as possible. It also asked that if she needed to stay late to catch up, she should let Elizabeth know so compensation could be arranged.
Sophie shook her head. The thought of working late did not appeal. ‘So we will just work through lunch and see how quickly we can get things done.’ Instead of her usual pod cast, Sophie put in her ear buds and navigated to a high energy music play list. it was the same play list she used after her month long ‘vacation’ and needed to catch up because Evers and the others hadn’t taken up her slack. The reminder made her frown.
‘But I managed to catch up then, I can do it now, and at least I won’t have others interrupting me trying to pass off their work.’ Still the similarity between the two situations stuck her hard and Sophie found herself glad she had gone on those interviews. If anything panned out from them, she might have to take an offer seriously.
She set other thoughts to the side, turned up the music and focused on catching up. Sophie worked through lunch. She meant to take a break and eat her sandwich, but forgot about it. No one interrupted her and she was able to work in peace. When the end of the day came, Sophie was pleased with her progress and felt that at this pace she could catch up by her weekly Friday meeting.
Sophie left on time and let herself spend the evening sketching randomly without too much thought. She let the pencil take the lines across the page without much conscious though. As a result, her mind was relaxed but there was nothing usable by the time she went to bed. She did feel calm and relaxed however. She suspected, that more than anything would help her with this week.
Ten til Midnight 