February 8th

Ah nothing beats a relaxing Friday, too bad I didn't exactly have one. Have any of you ever written anything fictional that falls under creative writing? Well I have, more so I've begun many projects that are simple snippets of Word documents on various flash sticks. They are fictional, but aren't finished. It takes a lot of stress and effort and stress and time and coffee to boost typing speed and stress to finish said creative works. I've rewritten single sentences for over two hours, just one sentence and hours of time. It is crazy!

If you haven't already guessed my Friday was dominated by me writing a fictional story, a short story to be exact. Le Havre University is having a little writing contest about madness. I thought, "eh why not? I could use the practice." Thus I have spent this Friday pacing my room, reciting dialogue, visualizing scenes, and typing like a 1960's secretary on a sugar high. When I needed a break I turned to lovely Tolkien. The LotR always inspires (and comforts) me, unlike my short story.

Since the topic was madness (which I lucked out on since I didn't realize there was a topic) the story I wrote is a bit "mad". For some reason when I saw the poster for the contest the first word that struck me was "wayward". Hopefully you all know the story of the prodigal or wayward son, the drifter who left home and all that jazz. Well over a year ago in a writing assignment for a Fiction workshop I did a dialogue passage between two characters where the word "wayward" was often used. Seeing the poster made me think of this word and inspired a story about waywardness, just drifting. I then thought, "hmmm what would be the end of the line for a wayward?" Not even a second later the word "Sterling" slammed into my brain; the one place to always give me goose bumps is Sterling Illinois.

My story was born from there. Two words hit my mind and something began to grow. I hope I win (who wouldn't want to?) but if I don't I now have a creepy short story about madness. Who wouldn't want that?