Wednesday Writings

My brain went on vacation around Thursday and I think just came off the virtual cruise ship Tuesday morning. All weekend long I did absolutely nothing important other than wow-ing people with my ability to Time Warp wearing three inch heels at our friend’s wedding and getting inducted into non-virgin status with a twinkie relay at a live show. Honestly, our first night away without kids and we acted like teenagers again, which we are not and I’m still paying for being out past 2am Sunday morning. But we had an awesome time and that’s what really matters.

Wedding on the beach

My last few goals for ROW80 are mainly to get my flash fiction pieces done for the month and to work on Faylinn’s Chronicles. I’m nearly 10k into the story (which you can catch up on at the top of the page) and currently have no idea how far it will go.

I’m working on catching up with my Writer’s Campaign peeps and visiting 10 fellow ROW80’ers today since I missed Sunday’s check-in.

One thing that I have learned this year is that writer’s can’t really do it alone. There are so many others involved with the writing process, bouncing of ideas, beta readers, editors, well, you get the picture, and all this is before even one word gets out to the reading public. It’s also very easy to get caught up in all the “other” stuff like Writer’s Campaigning, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, I’m still working to find a balance between all these while improving my knowledge of the craft and having fun, too. I have a feeling this is going to be a constant thing, maintaining balance.

October 1st I’ll be starting Margie Lawson’s Empowering Character’s Emotions with Jody Moller from my newly formed critique group. I plan to post about my (our) progress in the series as we go, so look for that in a few weeks. And from Jenny Hanson’s blog post last week I bought The Four Agreements and the companion book. I also picked up the eliptical over the weekend which was purely conicidental.

Writer’s Campaign Challenge ~ Not Yet

I had posted about this last week, this is the platform-building campaign to help social network writers. There are a lot of people participating in this. This first challenge has the following rules:

Write a short story/flash fiction story in 200 words or less, excluding the title. It can be in any format, including a poem. Begin the story with the words, “The door swung open” These four words will be included in the word count.

There are additional challenges like making it exactly 200 words and using “…the door swung shut.” as the last words. I met each of these challenges.

 

Not Yet

The door swung open fueled by my fears, slammed back against the whitewashed wall. He stood there, just on the other side. A figured robed in light, peered down his Roman nose at me. I fell to my knees. My mouth spilled a million excuses but he never spoke. Dark gaze flicked past me, I turned to see. The bed, the doctors, the limp hand splashing red drops. I wanted to go to him, rush through the door, but he shook his head. “It’s not your time. Not yet.” His lips never moved, the sound in my head. I cried, I wanted to go, to see what lay beyond. I begged, on my knees but he never came forward. Slowly silence was invaded with rushed sounds, harsh ringings, desperate urging voices. He took a step back, another and another. The tears dried. I got up, walked to the table. My face was a mash of blood and pulp and still the doctors worked. I lay down, closed my eyes, felt prickling as I sank back into my skin. Harsh ringing turned to steady beats. I opened my eyes, my true eyes, looking up at the harsh lights and the door swung shut.