He sat there in the cold room, with fingertips chilled, staring at the monitor. It said “Writing Challenge: the Devil is in the Details.” Details… He is me. He wears a long-sleeved maroon-colored shirt, navy-colored corduroys, brown shoes, socks and underwear, but does that even matter? He could be sitting there in underwear alone, or none, but it would not change the fact that his fingertips are cold.
The weight of this matter of writing something, anything to meet this challenge, weighs on him nearly as much as the weight on his bones, on the chair he sits upon, that cannot be raised at all, because the weight of the writer exceeds the weight that the chair’s hydraulics can support. Commas abound in this sentence prior.
Three paragraphs. That is the challenge, and details, of course. Here is the third. A short paragraph it will be. The challenge, complete. Or could more be said? More: the room he is in, added to the house years ago, insulated, but not enough. It is cold in winter and too warm in the heat of the summer. This is his computer room, his exercise room, adjacent to the laundry room with the extra freezer for frozen goods. Details enough? The devil knows ..
Posted by teeceecounsel on January 22, 2013 at 4:59 AM
Very lovely and full of creativity! I enjoyed every bit of it. Mine is long and I don’t have an interesting writing space, so I wrote about a woman walking into a restaurant. http://teeceecounsel.wordpress.com/2013/01/22/short-fiction-our-table-and-the-entrance/
Posted by Rotten Ray on January 22, 2013 at 8:57 AM
Thank you. I also read your story. Interesting ending – you could feel the silence in the restaurant and the shock of the friends when embracing the sister.
Posted by aj vosse on January 24, 2013 at 3:44 AM
That poor chair…
at least it got a mention!
Posted by mightwar on January 24, 2013 at 12:07 PM
I felt sorry for the writer. It is hard to be productive on command whilst the cold bites at you. Could we treat him to a small fan heater perhaps?