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 172: Sophie thought of the people still in the boardroom.
Sophie thought of the people still in the boardroom. Clearly it was still an issue. Part of he thought it would be better to finish out her day than to look into the details of the jobs offered. The other part of her couldn’t resist. She looked at the amount of work left before she headed off into her weekend and decided a few minutes wouldn’t hurt. ‘Especially since I am still being asked about Kristen and now Evers.’
In addition, listing out all of the extra work she did while they were claiming wrongful termination made her feel extra irritated. She pulled up the first of the text and scanned the details. She made a note of them on a scratch pad and then drew a line under it and listed out the details of the second job.
She then set the phone to the side and logged back into her computer. She took her files out and got started, still thinking about the job offers rather than continuing her pod cast. One of the job offered a salary that was about the same as what she made now and had hours that were pretty much the same as she had here. The second one had a higher pay, but the same hours. She thought there was slightly more responsibility with that one, but as she only applied for jobs that she knew she could handle while working on her own in the evenings and weekends, they were more or less comparable.
Did she want to make the change? That was the question. Each of the job offers came with a deadline. A date by which she needed to let them know if she planned to accept. They both had the same Tuesday deadline which gave he the weekend and a work day to think it over. Sophie continued her work on the afternoon files as she turned the details over. She thought of locations and drive time a well as all of the other details. ‘Probably need to make a pro and cons list when I get home,’ she thought.
It wasn’t something she thought was a good idea at the moment. A knock on her door startled her from her files and she looked up to see Elizabeth in her doorway.
She smiled as she came into the small office. “We never got a chance to talk about how things are going,” Elizabeth said. “Any issues with this week’s files?”
“I did have one question about the Henderson Account,” Sophie said. “I made a note of it.”
Elizabeth looked down at the scratch pad as Sophie reached for her notebook. Elizabeth frowned at the notations on the page.
“I was offered two positions,” Sophie explained as she turned to the page where she made the notes about the Henderson Corporation’s accounts.
“I see,” Elizabeth said. “And when do you have to decide?”
“By Tuesday at noon,” Sophie said. Technically one of them gave her until the close of business, but Sophie figured she’d decide them both at the same time.
“I see,” Elizabeth said.
“The messages were on my phone when I got back from the meeting.”
“Of course,” Elizabeth said. “I hope that will be the last meeting we have about that. The Henderson account?”
Sophie nodded and looked at her notes. “They seem to have added a few elements.”
Ten til Midnight 