The Story She Wrote

Kelly searched her brain trying to come up with a story that would impress the judges of the contest. Time was nearing an end. There were only minutes, now, until the contest reached an end for the day. She was tired and her ideas all played out. Every time an idea had come her way it somehow vanished suddenly after her fingers pounded the keys of her laptop computer, franticly expanding this angle and then another, only to end up with zilch, nothing. How, she wondered, would she ever achieve her goal when all her mind wanted to do was draw blanks?

She realized she was wasting time trying to analyze all that had happened since she’d sit down around 6 am, to try her hand, again, at the new prompt. The Writer’s Cramp was a contest she had not tried before, and she was doing it for the points she could get if her story should be chosen as a winner. 11,000 gift points were given away every 24 hours during writing.com’s eleventh year, Birthday bash. She wanted to enter every day to see if she could at least win once. But at the rate she was going, she would lose out of the present prompt, which was to write a story or a poem about an event that occurs at 11:11 am on November 11, 2011 (11/11/11).
In spite of her desperation and with a tiny bit of luck another idea came to her. She had to try and beat the clock…it was 11:11 am, she noticed, as she glanced at her computer’s clock. How ironic she thought; she began to write.
When Kelly was a junior in high school she had 40 minutes to write a theme for English, during class hours. She had a terrible time coming up with a subject. The teacher didn’t give a prompt to work with when he assigned the theme.

Kelly did write her theme that day; she wrote it in the last ten minutes of the class, and the teacher liked hers so much that he read it aloud to the class the next day. This experience is what she finally drew upon for her story in the WDC Cramp contest.

She wrote confidently with hushed fervor. Her story took shape; the words flew from her thoughts. Every word created came to her because of the theme she’d written more than forty years earlier.
As she put the finishing touches on her story she had just enough time to post it on the contest site, before the judging was to begin.

Kelly rejoiced; she celebrated her accomplishment by eating a light lunch and taking a well deserved nap afterwards. Upon arising from her nap, and without any immediate responsibilities needing her attention, she sat down, again, at her laptop to find out what the new prompt happened to be for The Writer’s Cramp contest. She found the prompt of particular interest to her liking, and wrote another story, which she finished and posted before 10 pm.

The next day, before writing another story, she found that her very first story had won her 11,000 gp’s. She was so thrilled that she had to tell someone before she could sit down and write another story for the day’s prompt.
She ended up calling her mother who lived 1200 miles from her in another state. It was Thursday, and the day of the week she would normally be calling her mom anyway.

“Hi, Mom,”

“Hi, Sweetheart, could you hang on a minute, I just have to finish putting some potatoes in the stew I’m fixing for supper.”

“Sure.”

“Thanks, I’m free now, what’s up with you?”

“Oh, not a lot, except I wanted to tell you about a contest I entered on the writing forum I’m on. I had a terrible time trying to find something to write about yesterday. It’s a 24 hour contest. It runs from noon to noon, day after day. Right now there is a special contest going for the eleventh birthday of the forum and, so I wanted to try it. I’d never done the contest before yesterday. I tried it, and won on my very first try. I was so excited I decided to call you, and let you know what a brilliant daughter you have.” They both laughed over this last statement.

“You said you had a terrible time thinking of something to write. How did you come up with something?”

“Oh, yeah, that is interesting. I somehow began to think about this theme I’d written in high school. You, see, we had only the class hour to write a theme for Mr. Hunt’s eleventh grade English. I had a terrible time that day thinking up something to write about. I guess that is what gave me the idea yesterday.”
“What did you come up with?”

“That is the best part. I decided to write about how hard a time I was having finding a subject to write about. It was so successful, back then, that, I decided to do it for my story, but to expand upon it a little. So, I did…”

“Reader, if you are having a hard time understanding what is meant by, “So, I did…”, go back to the beginning of this story and read it all over again, so you will know what Kelly wrote for her story.”

word count: 899