Ten-Finger Exercises

Maintenance of Wakefulness, and plot

Bill went in for his overnight and all day tomorrow testing for sleep apnea. He has had it for fourteen years with no problem of falling asleep during the daytime. He has been wearing a CPAP machine ever since then to sleep at night. I hope he can sleep well tonight, wired up and in a strange place with a new Temprapedic mattress that he thinks is too soft for him.

Tomorrow will be the hard part. Just looking a that sterile, taupe colored room with no windows made me sleepy. All you pray-ers out there, please pray that he can stay awake all day on that bed in a darkened room.

You who have read my blog or my port have probably noticed that I've mainly been writing flash fiction and short poetry. There's a reason for that: I don't know how to write longer. I'm better at condensing than amplifying. The only short story, or one of two or three I guess, that I've ever finished in my life is in there and it's lousy. I don't know how to plot out something long with sub-plots and things. My only adventure with that has been my blog-alog with Margot and Rupert, et al.

So I started taking NavWorks Fiction Writing Advanced Class listed below. This lesson is on scenes, and he said we could submit either a flash fiction or a scene from one of a list of prompts. I wrote the flash first because it came to me and made me laugh, in its shaggy dog sort of way. But then I tried a scene, with some introduction, because I thought it would be more what I need to learn. I liked it, but can't imagine going ahead with it into something else, which is too bad because I'd like to have some idea for NoWriMo.

(Sigh.)

Putting only a link to a story in seems like a surefire way to lose readership. Those blogs seldom get comments. So I'll try not to do that again. Sure wish we had a way to tell how many people visit each entry. At least we'd know better what appeals and what doesn't, now that I know there are many of us 'blog-lurkers' around who read without comment.
(However, as I looked to see if it was Chewey who coined that phrase, I see she has a link I want to go read.)


P.S. Here's the scene I wrote for the same lesson. It's the one I was considering going on with. Sorry if I confused you.

Not to the Manor Born scene  (E) beginning of a longer story, 1 scene for NavWorks' class #1159065 by Wren