It sounded simple. It would be easy. I’d win!
“This will be a piece of cake” I said to my new hairdresser on that first day.
Ha!
I just had to come up with a great idea, choose a style, spend some time getting my act together, and put another win in my books.
There was a time when my family looked down on this particular hobby of mine because it would never make me very much money. Then I started to win. Some people said I had sold out, but I’m not in it for the money; I do it for fun. Entire days will have gone by before I look up. I sit at my computer for hours every day typing away at my newest entry.
I sit so much the blood starts pooling in my knees, causing a lot of pain. I sit so much staring at a computer screen that my eyesight starts to go a bit blurry, I bite my nails, and I get hangry. I sit and type so much my wrists and back become sore.
I manage to keep up with my basic obligations, such as shopping, cooking, cleaning, feeding pets and brushing teeth. But the hobby demands a lot of my time. Building a good story is a lot harder than it might seem to some. It’s not enough to simply have a great idea, a decent understanding of proper grammar, and time to put those two together.
The writer must have something special. It’s something all great artists must have. They must allow the art to flow through them, not because of them, for a work of art to be born. I’ve heard this special something be called a muse, but I have to confess I do not really know what my muse is or how to summon it when needed. Often I sit down to write a story that is to be my seminal work, the work that will wow readers, and nothing of value, even to me, appears.
The trick, or so I think today, is to let go. The trick for me is to clear my mind of my self, to suspend judgement as I write and just let the words splay themselves onto the page. Writing five minute freewrites helped me with learning how to do this; to write anything in five minutes, I have to let go.
I must get back to the story I started to write about the contest that would be a piece of cake for me to win.
“How hard can that be?” I thought when I read the contest rules. I just had to fit my story into a template of sorts, one that didn’t seem that hard. Although that first time was very difficult, I’ve learned some tricks that help me write sentences of a certain number of words, such as this one that contains exactly thirty one.
This is my third entry to one of @tristancarax's #31sentencestory contests, and you can find the current round of that contest here. It's an excellent challenge for which you have to write a story that has sentences of a randomly predetermined length.
3, 4, 2, 17, 1, 27, 24, 5, 20, 10, 15, 16, 26, 12, 19, 9, 14, 22, 6, 7, 21, 30, 29, 11, 28, 23, 25, 13, 18, 31
Eight is missing in the contest post, or my aging eyes are playing a trick on me, so this is really a thirty sentence story.
I invite all creative writers to join in the fun!
All images are my own unless otherwise stated.
