Evelyn's Writing Countdown

Evelyn scrolls through the Reedsy articles, bored out of her mind.

New Year’s Eve… yay. A new year, maybe I can finally finish my novel with my friend. She thinks to herself. 

Of course she knows she should be working on her novel, but Evelyn had been working on it for a majority of the afternoon and had just stopped, drained out of her creative juices for the day.

She clicks on the article 60 Gifts that your Writer Friends will Love! Not that she had any writer friends, but maybe she could find something for herself. She came across #4; AquaNotes for $7. 

Huh. I totally need that. 

She takes a quick screenshot and shoots an email to her parents, as she had no phone to text them on. 

The email title was just explaining that she needs it and the body of the email was just the screenshot. Maybe she’d get it for Easter. They probably wouldn’t see her email for a while, but hey, at least she sent it.

She would have told her parents right then but her dad was reading instructions for a new WWll board game that he’d been wanting for forever and her mom was on the phone with her cousin discussing Supernatural together, which Evelyn had never seen. And was probably never going to see, since they had gotten rid of their Netflix account.

As Evelyn continued to read through the list, one of the sidebars caught her eye, an ad for a writing contest. You’d get 5 writing prompts to choose from and write a short story on and submit it for a chance to win $50. 

Eh, why not? She types in her email and clicks the subscribe button. 

Unfortunately, she was not logged in. And she had forgotten her password and not saved it. Wonderful. 

She goes through the whole process of having Reedsy email her a new password and resetting it and then logging in and then having to go back and find the article to find the same sidebar again.

Finally. She types her email in again and this time an email is sent to her inbox on the contest. She opens it and starts skimming the contents. A list of the prompts, an introductory video, (which she couldn’t watch because Youtube was blocked on her school Chromebook.) and submission guidelines. She read the guidelines carefully. Go to the contest page, sign up for an account, and click submit. Pretty standard stuff. 

The next couple of bullet points were more important. The story needed to be at least 1,000 words and at most 3,000 words. Not bad. Evelyn had over 6,000 words on her current novel so surely she could get within the limit by the time it was due. Although… she had been working on that novel with her best friend for a couple of months to get that far. 

Evelyn shakes off the doubt in her mind and scrolls down to look at the next bullet point.

The next line said the story was due by the end of the day on Jan 01, 2021. 

Hold up. What day was it? It was definitely December...er… 20 somethingth? 

Wait, it’s New Year Eve’s, December 31st! Not 20 somethingth! Tomorrow would be January 1st, the deadline.

Crap crap crap crap crap! I signed up to finish a story by tomorrow? Evelyn’s eyes practically pop out of her head. 

Well, what are the prompts? 

She scrolls back up to the top of the email to read the 5 prompts more thoroughly. Sure, she had read them twice already, but with this current information Evelyn felt like she better read them over again.

1. Write about someone scrambling to finish a goal in the last few hours of the year.
2. Write about someone keeping track of time with tally marks on a wall — until one day they discover that all the marks are gone.
3. Write a story that takes place across ten days.
4. Write a story that takes place across ten seconds.
5. Write a story in the form of a top-ten list.

Evelyn glances at the clock. 2:30 on December 31st.

Okay, she could do this. The theme was countdown, fitting for New Year’s Eve. The 2nd one would mostly likely be taken as horror or fantasy, but also fit her style of writing more than the others. The third would be do-able, but seems a bit boring to her. The 4th would be extremely difficult.

Oh, perfect for either a time traveller or a speedster like in The Flash. I could totally write a story like that. Hmmm, it seems so unoriginal.

But the 5th one was perfect. A top-ten list would be awesome. It would open up room for an amusing character voice, maybe even write it in a journal form. Like a top-ten favorite moments of my life, or most embarrassing moments, or top ten cutest guys. (Evelyn’s characters are usually all girls, as she doesn’t know boys well enough to write one. Her only brother was younger than her, and she prefers to write characters either age or older than her, so he’s out of the equation.) 

Although, there was something about the first one. It fit her style, it was amusing, it opened up room for an interesting story and character voice, but it was missing something. This sort of thing would require planning for hours at least, weeks at most, so she wouldn’t be able to craft a whole story in less than 24 hours, including plot and 3-dimensional character/s. 

Write about someone scrambling to finish a goal in the last few hours of the year.

Evelyn comes across a startling realization that makes her laugh. It starts a chuckle, then grows into a giggle, but then ends up as a big belly-laugh. 

How could she have been so blind? She clutches her sides, still laughing. Her siblings, who had been glued to their screens, now stare at her with confusion. 

Her dad raises an eyebrow.

“Are you okay, Evelyn?’ 

“Y-yeah, I’m fine. I just had an idea.” She lets out a final giggle as she opens up a new Google Doc. She titles it Evelyn’s Writing Countdown and starts typing.

Evelyn scrolls through the Reedsy articles, bored out her mind...