Flash Fiction – Off the beaten track

 

I stumble, splay out my hands to break my fall landing hard on the dry earth. Pain rockets through my shoulders and neck. I rest back on my heels, brush dust from my palm, examine the wound. Dripping blood turns the dusty ground crimson.

I sit for what seems an interminable time in the scorching sun. Every muscle in my body stings, sweat trickles down my shoulder blades. I shake my empty water bottle. I cannot carry on.

But then I think of him. Rise, press myself forward.

I lurch over the finishing line clutching my sponsor form.

I did it. For him. For them all.

 

Written for Friday Fictioneers – a 100 word story inspired by a prompt. Read the other entires here.

My inspiration this week came from the word TRAK – I thought of the phrase ‘off the beaten track,’ and initially thought of someone being lost in the desert. I then thought what if someone was completing a run for charity but had those same feelings, insufferable heat, exhaustion etc. could they carry on?

The naive novelist?

I have always had an obsession with books, but aside from a couple of flash fiction pieces I wrote several years ago, I had never tried to write. I guess I never believed that I could. Last April I wanted to try, I set up this blog and here I am.

Throughout the last few weeks I have regularly been posting short stories and have completely fallen in love with the writing process, to be able to immerse myself in characters and plots of my own making has been a total joy.

With encouragement from the lovely Louise Walters, author of the fabulous Mrs Sinclair’s Suitcase, I decided to try to write a novel.

When I began, back in May, I found it unimaginable that I may be able to write 1000 words, ten times more than my longest story, and yet, several weeks on, I have broken the 40,000 barrier.

Eager to learn the craft, I have been reading many blogs and articles on novel writing. I have read page after page telling me that first novels are always terrible, that I need to write three books before I have one that’s readable, that I will most probably give up before I reach the end, that I…… no, actually that’s when I stopped reading.

I don’t want to dampen my enthusiasm so I choose to believe that maybe, just maybe, with handwork and passion I can write something that I can be proud of, and if I can’t, then I will have had a blast trying.

Fabricating Fiction or The Naive Novelist? Time will tell.