Day 313 Writing Short Stories

Star

I skipped this one. I started from the bottom, moving my way up to the Star prompt, and here I lost my focus again.

Flickering Lights

He drew the cover over his head, hearing the buzz of the flickering light. It had started all of a sudden. He had already been in bed, all lights shut, and then it had come. Then they had come as they had come every night.

The flickering lights had come with pressure. He knew he wasn’t alone. He could hear their whispers, their demands. They wanted him to soothe them back into oblivion, but he couldn’t take any longer of their pain, their hatred, their unfinished thoughts and fears, their hunger for life and death.

He wanted them to go away. He said as much. But death made people selfish. Death made people insufferable. Death made people cruel.

And he couldn’t do cruel.

He kept the cover on and waited for the hour of death to pass, and sleep to come.

Dying World

Death was a cruel thing. It was something he had learned to live with over the past decade. Nothing seemed to last. And it had become the only constant in his life on the dying Earth. But thus far, he had had Thomas. He hadn’t been alone.

He watched his friend, his world, cough and twist in his sleep. Death would come soon enough.

No matter how much water he carried, no matter how many drugs he scavenged, no matter how many soups he made, Thomas would die. He had done all he could for his young friend.

He wasn’t sure if he feared his death more than he feared being the last man on Earth. Both terrified him. But he didn’t let it show. He would make sure the last days Thomas would ever experience were the best. That he would go into the night, knowing he had loved him more than anything.

Thomas wheezed.

He tensed, waiting, but then the breathing began again, and he could relax.

Death was the most natural thing there was. But he didn’t want it.

The prompts are from the book A Year of Creative Writing Prompts.

Yesterday turned out to be impossible writing-wise, forcing me to skip writing prompts altogether. Today was almost the same, but I got to take a nap, and I feel slightly better. My shoulder is in pain, and I didn’t sleep well last night. The shoulder wasn’t the reason I didn’t write yesterday. I had too many things going on, making my thoughts race, so I decided not to write, knowing nothing good would come out of it.

I listened today to Nobel winner Paul Harding speak about writing. The thing is, it seems there is no wrong way to write. The trick is to find a way that works for you and focus on the story, nothing else. His address helped me gather my thoughts today, giving me a way to fix an issue in my sci-fi novel. I was too caught up with the comment I received from the beta reader. The comment made me freeze. I couldn’t find a way to reconcile their statement and the reason why the scene was in the book. Harding’s words made sense. So I added and cut elements that might hinder the experience, but I kept the scene from the book because it’s an important way to show how and why the main character is breaking: he realizes the world doesn’t work the way he thinks it does.

David Perell’s YouTube channel has been a blessing. It has been good to hear about the writing processes of prolific, celebrated writers. It gives perspective and makes me think about what kind of writer I want to be, how I want to write, and what I need to learn.

Thank you for reading ❤ Have a day of learning!