Six Sentence Stories – First Draft
A half-balled wad of paper sailed across the room – whoosh – into the can.
The sun moved with purpose past the windows of the room and as the light waned, so did his confidence and page by page, chapter by chapter, words sailed across the room, the tightening wads a clear indicator of his mounting frustration.
He looked at the clock; bloody hell, I’ve only got an hour.
He rolled his chair across the room and began reclaiming the discarded prose from the trash can page by page, chapter by chapter, lovingly smoothing and stacking each one in its proper place and collecting them with a black shoelace.
A sharp knock and a voice at the door: “Sir? I’m here to pick up your draft, sir.”
He opened the door, thrust the wrinkled stack at the messenger and sighed, “Here – tell them to start with this.”
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Each week, the lovely and talented Ivy Walker hosts a link-up challenging writers to spin a tale in six sentences – no more, no less.
This week’s cue is DRAFT.
Click on the link right here to link your own post and read more Six Sentence Stories from some wonderful storytellers.
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It is easy to feel the mounting frustration as those crumpled pages are sent sailing, also the resignation as he pulls them from the trash to compile as a mandated offering. Very good description of a writer’s life, and yet I suspect that sometimes what is recovered might turn out to be better than we first judged it!
That is my hope for him – that it’s better than he believes. We are our own worst critics in all things.
Deadlines! Hate ’em.
Definitely.
but…but …. but! (lol), I like the the scene but I love the, whatever it is that made me go back after reading the first time. There is an invisible anvil hanging by a thread in there, isn’t there? Well, maybe not an anvil, but I totally got a ‘more to this scene than meets the eye.’
good ‘un
I like this kind of comment. There’s always more to the scene than meets the eye, isn’t there?
The life of any writer! Quirky little piece – I love it!
Thank you, Deborah!
I wonder how many words have been tossed in the trash can and then resurrected. Very good story of a writer’s process.
I suspect that number is great.
A bit of biography creeping in here perchance?!
Eh…not really. Not yet, anyway! 😀
It is the better part of a week and I feel no better. In fact, I am very disturbed by people in the media who recognized the destructive venom that was being spewed on Tuesday, but by Wednesday were saying we have to hit reset. Reset? What I think I am really hearing is, be quiet now. Get in line. It is what it is. Yeah, well, what it is leads to facism and facism grows and spreads when good people are too polite to speak up. No, now me. I will be watching and warning.