Rachel stopped writing to take a sip of her coffee. As she sipped she grimaced and stared down at the cup in her hand. It was cold? How long ago had she made this that it was already stone cold? How long had she been writing for? She found the key in her pocket and opened up the bottom draw of her desk, pulling out her phone and turning it on. It came to life and beeped at her with all her missed messages—the very reason she always locked it away when trying to write. She put checking them to one side and looked at the time. 2am? She’d been writing for over four hours? Well, no wonder her coffee was so cold.
Tag: Strike
The Character’s Strike (Back): Part 4
Rachel waited in front of the museum bathroom for her daughter, Lucy, to come out. She yawned, throwing her hand to her face so quickly she accidentally hit herself in the mouth, causing throbbing pain to shoot through her jaw. Leaning against the wall behind her, she closed her eyes and let the pain subside.
The Character’s Strike (Back): Part 3
It’d been a rough morning for David Hillborough. His alarm had rung too early to be bearable, thanks to his wife’s insistence of her newly-discovered four-am workout sessions online. His oldest child, fourteen year-old Shawna, had decided that the only way to deal with early morning wake-up’s for school was to practice their drumming in… Continue reading The Character’s Strike (Back): Part 3
The Characters’ Strike (Back): Part 2
Yes, she thought. All the ideas I’d had. All the stories I’d written, turned down because it ‘didn’t quite fit’ or that I’d been made to re-write so it would ‘appeal to a greater audience’. She sighed, remembering when as a nineteen year old she’d made the promise to herself to always stay true to herself and be confident in what she wanted to write. She’d learned very quickly that to get anywhere in this industry you had to bend, at least slightly, to what other people said. Recently though it was like she was doing nothing except bending to what every other person wanted, or constantly considering what other people would think before she even had the opportunity to think of any story idea herself. There wasn’t an original idea left in her head, it seemed. Nineteen-year old her would be ashamed of what she’d become.
The Literary Onion 