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15_minute_fic // Prompt word: spell // Untitled
May. 28th, 2008 10:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
katiefooleryHey, look at this shiny, pretteh lovely banner-type thing:
That links directly to the comm I run with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
crazedturkey, working tirelessly to provide writers (and sometimes each other) with a prompt word a week. Oh, how we labour deep into the night, always seeking the perfect word for the upcoming week...
Anyway, moving right along. Fallen into a writing rut? Have a spare fifteen minutes? Then this is the place for you! We've been running it for over a year now and we have close to three hundred members... but there's plenty of room for more.
And this week, after months of foregoing my writing for beta-ing, I decided to write a ficlet. I noticed a while back that one ofcrazedturkey's words had been incredibly popular, so I made a note to go back and use it for ficletting purposes when I had a chance. That chance came last night and this ficlet followed shortly after. Please read and enjoy.
Oh, and feel free to try and guess the prompt word, as always. (I think it's pretty obvious in this one.)
Title: Untitled
Fandom: Original
Rating: PG (language)
Word count: 397 words
Prompt word: spell
Written for prompt word #37 at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
15_minute_fic.
It wasn’t a spell, it was more of an…
“Irritation.”
No, that word was pointless. Useless. As empty and faded as it sounded in the dark air around her. So she reconsidered.
“A fucking irritation.”
Yeah. That sounded much better. Swearing always made things seem more real and less like that cultured, sugar-sweet world in which she’d grown up. The same one she’d run away from just a month ago. Just a month, and she was already swearing in the darkness and loving the sound of it.
Give up.
The walls whispered the words to her. The ground. The dank roof above her.
Hell, even the air taunted her to give in.
Come to me.
“No,” she whispered back.
You’ll die.
But she knew it already. That sort of thing was inevitable. In her old life, people died in giant beds, resting on the softest of mattresses and shrouded by the finest of eiderdowns. Surrounded by their loving families. Sometimes they died tragically in the arms of a lover, usually in some kind of faultless sacrifice that lived through the ages.
As though that somehow made up for it.
She knew she was going to die; it just wasn’t going to be here and now. Any second now, she’d work out how to move again. She’d remember how to breathe. How to see. How to live. She’d dismiss that feeling of cold creeping over her as though it were nothing.
Give up.
The mantra again.
Come to me.
How many times had she heard it now?
You’ll die.
Give up and live – that was the deal and she knew it. She wanted to. Every fibre of her being screamed out to give in. Surrender.
Live.
Her lungs were burning, and yet the rasping heat only made her feel more alive. She couldn’t breathe and she was blind in this darkness, yet she was living more and seeing more than she’d ever seen in her entire sheltered life. If this was death then it bore more meaning than life itself.
The mantra came again – words that had long since lost meaning to her. Nothing meant more than the burning in her chest and the tingling chill in her fingertips. So alive. No orderly dance or choreographed banquet had ever held as much appeal as this moment of hopelessness.
Give up.
No…
Come to me.
Make me…
You’ll die.
That links directly to the comm I run with
crazedturkey, working tirelessly to provide writers (and sometimes each other) with a prompt word a week. Oh, how we labour deep into the night, always seeking the perfect word for the upcoming week...Anyway, moving right along. Fallen into a writing rut? Have a spare fifteen minutes? Then this is the place for you! We've been running it for over a year now and we have close to three hundred members... but there's plenty of room for more.
And this week, after months of foregoing my writing for beta-ing, I decided to write a ficlet. I noticed a while back that one of
crazedturkey's words had been incredibly popular, so I made a note to go back and use it for ficletting purposes when I had a chance. That chance came last night and this ficlet followed shortly after. Please read and enjoy.Oh, and feel free to try and guess the prompt word, as always. (I think it's pretty obvious in this one.)
Title: Untitled
Fandom: Original
Rating: PG (language)
Word count: 397 words
Prompt word: spell
Written for prompt word #37 at
15_minute_fic.It wasn’t a spell, it was more of an…
“Irritation.”
No, that word was pointless. Useless. As empty and faded as it sounded in the dark air around her. So she reconsidered.
“A fucking irritation.”
Yeah. That sounded much better. Swearing always made things seem more real and less like that cultured, sugar-sweet world in which she’d grown up. The same one she’d run away from just a month ago. Just a month, and she was already swearing in the darkness and loving the sound of it.
Give up.
The walls whispered the words to her. The ground. The dank roof above her.
Hell, even the air taunted her to give in.
Come to me.
“No,” she whispered back.
You’ll die.
But she knew it already. That sort of thing was inevitable. In her old life, people died in giant beds, resting on the softest of mattresses and shrouded by the finest of eiderdowns. Surrounded by their loving families. Sometimes they died tragically in the arms of a lover, usually in some kind of faultless sacrifice that lived through the ages.
As though that somehow made up for it.
She knew she was going to die; it just wasn’t going to be here and now. Any second now, she’d work out how to move again. She’d remember how to breathe. How to see. How to live. She’d dismiss that feeling of cold creeping over her as though it were nothing.
Give up.
The mantra again.
Come to me.
How many times had she heard it now?
You’ll die.
Give up and live – that was the deal and she knew it. She wanted to. Every fibre of her being screamed out to give in. Surrender.
Live.
Her lungs were burning, and yet the rasping heat only made her feel more alive. She couldn’t breathe and she was blind in this darkness, yet she was living more and seeing more than she’d ever seen in her entire sheltered life. If this was death then it bore more meaning than life itself.
The mantra came again – words that had long since lost meaning to her. Nothing meant more than the burning in her chest and the tingling chill in her fingertips. So alive. No orderly dance or choreographed banquet had ever held as much appeal as this moment of hopelessness.
Give up.
No…
Come to me.
Make me…
You’ll die.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
on 2008-05-28 01:22 am (UTC)Brava!
no subject
on 2008-05-28 02:53 am (UTC)no subject
on 2008-05-28 01:57 pm (UTC)I want to know who this 'brat' is, and what she's running from. :P
no subject
on 2008-05-28 02:30 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2008-05-28 05:48 pm (UTC)This is very impressive for 15 minutes. Can't help but feel a little jealous as well considering I'm the person who can't write a simple post in under an hour. :(
write, read, edit, re-write, preview, toss out and try again, stare at the little box mindlessly....yeah I think you get the idea.
So think the muses will decided to make this longer?
no subject
on 2008-05-28 09:42 pm (UTC)I can be just the same with posts, though. Sometimes, the shortest thing has actually taken me ages to write. But that's the fun and the challenge of the fifteen minute ficlet - you have to think fast and see what happens. You should try one and see how it goes. :D
no subject
on 2008-05-29 06:05 am (UTC)no subject
on 2008-05-29 09:58 am (UTC)no subject
on 2008-12-08 11:03 am (UTC):[ I wish I could write like this. My story looks like total BS next to what you wrote. And this was SHORT!
:'[ I'm a total failure.
-dies.-
no subject
on 2008-12-09 08:21 am (UTC)Wow, thanks. :) Uh, that sounds slightly inadequate when you've complimented me so amazingly, but I mean it. Thank-you. Mostly, I've been editing other people's stuff for the past year or so, which means I haven't been writing much of my own. I'm so glad you liked this.
You're not a total failure! Everyone writes differently. And I'm totally jealous of any number of writers and wish I could write like they do, too.
no subject
on 2008-12-10 04:26 am (UTC)You...edit?
Zomg... I want you to edit my stuff! D:
But every time I wonder about betas I have to realize that they aren't there to make my work better or to make it less lame. They just correct spelling and grammar. It sucks. :[
no subject
on 2008-12-10 07:02 am (UTC)There are many levels of betas, though. Some will just look at spelling or grammar, but others will go further. I definitely go further - I'm always pushing my writer to try different ways of writing, or to improve particular areas.
I'm working with one particular writer at the moment - and they write looooooong chapters, so it takes a lot of time. But if you ever have anything short you'd like me to look at, I'd be happy to! Just be aware that I'm really tough and you may hate me when you get my comments back...
no subject
on 2008-12-10 08:48 am (UTC)YOU'LL DO IT?!
Idk what is long to you. The longest I've done recently is like 6 to 7 pages, I think. So I don't really know, haha.
And I don't care if you're really nitpicky. I'd rather have it like that. But at the moment I'm kind of just writing to get the story done so I can start the rewrite. But I think it'd help if you were like, "this sucks ass" ahead of time so I don't suck at the rewrite too! XD
I don't do the docX thing 'cause it confuses me so I'll message you with my email!
:D <3
no subject
on 2008-12-11 08:48 am (UTC)Six to seven pages sounds very manageable to me. The most recent chapter I finished working on with my writer was some .thirty-three pages long - something like 12,000 words I believe. And the other ones still waiting to be beta-ed are just as long. Or longer! So yeah, it shouldn't take me too long to do a six or seven page story.