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 215: The schedule was filling up, however there was still space.
The schedule was filling up, however there was still space. By looking at her calendar as a year instead of taking each month at a time, Sophie felt better able to breathe and plan. She was able to shift things around so that if there was a day where she simply felt like doing nothing she could. There was time to take a night off if the office was crazy or if she got sick. She would not be racing.
Sophie also went ahead and blocked out one weekend a month using her purple so that she could later fill the space in with things she found. ‘And if an event is on a different weekend that month I can shift things.’
Over all Sophie was pleased with herself. She knew if she didn’t block things out, she would forget to do them and not incorporate anything but work into her schedule. ‘But this way it is already there, sort of.’
Once she was happy with the list, Sophie began a search. He started with the various museums and galleries within a two hour driving distance and started looking at their exhibit schedules as well as their permanent exhibits. She made a list of some of the dates for the ones she wanted to attend and started feathering them into the slots she left in the calendar. Occasionally she had to shift a weekend here or there but there wasn’t as much shifting as she thought.
‘And I’ll need to look at my leave time to find a good time to take off for another actual vacation,’ Sophie decided. But that, she thought could wait. For now she was pleased with herself and considered her schedule ass set as it needed to be. She set the lop top aside to charge and took out her sketchpads.
Slowly Sophie perused the drawings she made while she was gone. A couple of the smaller sketches suggested things to her, so she pulled her larger sketch pad over and began sketching out some designs for later projects. She spent the rest of the day sketching and designing. When she was hungry she took a break to eat.
She checked the time and even though she got tired a little early, Sophie made herself stay up until her normal bed time. Even if he ended up getting up earlier, she wanted to get back in a more normal sleep schedule before work began.
By the time Sophie the clock reached her regular bed time Sophie was yawning and more than ready for sleep. She brushed her teeth and barely managed to get into her pajamas before crawling into bed and rolling straight into sleep. She woke once in the night to get up and go to the bathroom, but slept soundly otherwise.
In the morning her eyes popped open even without the alarm and Sophie saw it was the same early hour as the day before. ‘There are worse things,’ she told herself. She turned off her alarm clock and got out of bed. As she had the day before, Sophie went down to the gym. This time he found Kevin was walking in at the same time she was.
Ten til Midnight 