I don't regret That I was Thursday's child

Thursday's Child - David Bowie

 

 Thursday it is...

Today I manages a little art work with oil pastels and some playing with the digital paint program. It is week 19 - Fish in the 52 week challenge.

The top one has some enhancements through the digital program. I am a total newbie when it comes to digital art and very timid with the program. I think I need to find a course or two to find out how I can really make my art gleam in that medium.

The original is done with oil pastels on primed paper. I will need to do more fish before I am happy with the results.


A story a day. Day 8 a very interesting prompt today but you will have to wait for the end results because I am only part way through. So today I give you day 7's. :) 

Day 7 Writing Prompt from Becca Puglisi – Ending Line

Becca Puglisi is passionate about learning and sharing her knowledge with others. This is one of her reasons for writing The Emotion Thesaurus, The Positive Trait Thesaurus, and The Negative Trait Thesaurus. A member of SCBWI, she leads workshops at regional conferences, teaches webinars through WANA International, and can be found online at Writers Helping Writers (formerly known as The Bookshelf Muse).

May 7, 2014 by Julie Duffy

The Prompt

Write the story that accompanies this ending line:

I clicked off the safety, swearing that if she showed her face here today, my room would be the last one she ever entered.

We work in the factory. Her factory. Sixteen hour shifts with two ten minute breaks for the toilet and food. No more than four of us at any time through any exit. Guards, cameras, guns and shock sticks. Thousands of us work here. We don’t get paid, they tell us our families get the wages, we just get tired. If we are late to our station they punish us. If we don’t eat the meager rations they give us they punish us, if we don’t meet quota they punish us, if we get sick – we don’t get sick. She likes to mete out the punishment herself and makes it showy. She reminds us on huge screens that we would starve if not for her generosity and our families would starve and that we can only help our families by doing our best. We have to watch when she punishes one of us as an example. We don’t know where the bodies go.

Every day this same routine of  work interspersed with violence for some infraction, a never ending cycle with no end and no hope and her standing over all of us inflicting her cruelties.
There had to be some way to end the torment.

In repetitious tedium my mind wandered to a solution. Improbable, impossible maybe, a solution that would free us all is worth the risk. I allow only the barest attention for my job and the invisible watchers. I plan and I am patient.

I worked secretly building it one circuit at a time in stolen moments and stolen parts, under cover of her constant surveillance. Except it isn’t constant and I find the gaps.

I build it in the space under my work station. It has to be small to fit there but I can do it

The end of the shift we shuffle to our sleep mats. I share a room with seven others. We rarely talk. What is there to talk about? None of us have been outside since we arrived. I sign up for an extra shift once a week.

When it is ready I smuggle it to my room.

I clicked off the safety, swearing that if she showed her face here today, my room would be the last one she ever entered.  381

I am thoroughly enjoying these little prompts. I also need to do this weeks 500 words for the 38 week challenge. The theme is 'plucky' and I have had a few ideas but nothing solid enough to grab on to.

I am giving the Midweek Blues buster a break this week. Sometimes the songs do not do it for me.

I am having plenty of opportunities to read and write revisions this week. Once the week is over though I really need to make sure my word counts are through the roof as I finish off several novels I have begun especially one with the working title "Goldilocks and the Bear".

 It is well over the 60k mark and needs just a few more chapters to end it but I am having difficulty deciding how it will end. I have three possible scenarios playing around in my head, where they have been doing a slow dance for several years. It is time to pin one down and commit to it.  I am loving this novel. It started out as an idea chewed on over a hot cuppa with my cousin and grew over several years then last November during nanowrimo I put 50,000 words together. The research was so exciting. I learned so much about Australia in the 50s and 60s and how the growth of telephones and ownership of cars skyrocketed. I learned about travel by ship then luxurious aeroplanes and finally more modern transport which is faster but far less luxurious. I learned about work and pollution in London in the fifties and I had to research several jobs including one setting up road houses and petrol stations along the highways in Australia. I even learned when the first motel came into being and why motoring hotel was so quickly diminished to motel. Research is almost as much fun as writing the story. This novel is about two Australian women from two different generations in the same family walking the same path with very different outcomes.