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 216: This time she found Kevin was walking in at the same time she was.
This time she found Kevin was walking in at the same time she was. She smiled at him. “Up early?” She asked.
“Well I couldn’t let you show me up,” he replied. “If you could fight jet lag to work out then I could stop hitting my snooze button fifteen times before rolling out of bed.”
“Makes sense I suppose,” Sophie said. They each began their slow warm ups. Kevin took a place near her for easier conversation.
“So how is the jet lag?” he asked.
“I think I am over it, but I thought I might actually be able to get more things done if I started just a little bit earlier,” she told him.
“So it isn’t a competition?” he asked.
“No,” Sophie replied with a laugh, this is as early as I am going to get up. If you feel like beating me to the gym by five minutes I won’t start coming in ten minutes earlier. I’ll just let you have the win.”
“Well I could use a little extra time in the morning too,” Kevin said. “And I don’t think I want to get up any earlier either. I still have to press the snooze button occasionally or it will feel abandoned.”
As their workouts increased from the warm up stage, conversation stopped. Despite not claiming to be too competitive Sophie noticed that any time she moved to a heavier weight or a faster speed, so did Kevin. She pushed herself and he seemed to want to push himself a little bit harder. There was a moment where Sophie contemplated going a step further than she planned just to see what he would do. As he was already looking like he was approaching his limit, she decided not to push it.
She was surprised at how much she wanted to though. ‘That usually isn’t like me,’ she thought. She had never been a very competitive person. It was one of the reasons beyond her more practical design aesthetic that let her know she didn’t need to be in the world of high fashion. Everything she saw of that world seemed to stress competition.
‘Maybe it is just because he made it a competition,’ she thought as she finished her workout and began her cool down. She didn’t mind losing a competition, but something in her balked at making it an easy victory. They both started their cool downs and even though they were both covered in sweat, they were catching their breath.
“I am definitely coming down early tomorrow,” Kevin told her when he caught his breath. “I haven’t pushed myself in months.”
“You just couldn’t stand losing?” Sophie asked.
Kevin grinned. “I do hate losing, to anyone really. But if left to my own devices I will coast a bit. So I use my competitive streak to my advantage and I push myself.”
“Sound’s reasonable,” Sophie replied.
“What about you? Coasting, pushing?”
“Well I tend to push myself more when I am annoyed with work,” she admitted. “Other than that I just tend to stay at the same pace. I probably need to find something to push me if I am going to do more. Although I am not sure I want to do more.”
Kevin looked at her and frowned.
Ten til Midnight 