Short Story Example

Julie kicked the door shut behind her, tossed her keys on the desk and headed for the refrigerator. She grabbed a Coke and a piece of left-over chicken and then stood at the sink eating the cold chicken with her fingers. She gazed out the window at the incredibly warm and sunny winter day. She longed to spend the afternoon with her boyfriend but her last assignment waited and it was due tonight. She felt the time slipping away quickly, as if a bomb were about to go off. She sighed, threw the chicken bone in the trash, popped the lid on the Coke, took a sip and resigned herself to spend the rest of the afternoon in frustrated seclusion. Julie set the Coke down on a coaster and plopped herself in front of her laptop hitting the power button on the computer at the same time. The young woman threw her head back and stared up at the ceiling, twirling in her chair as the computer booted up. When the familiar whir of the startup process stopped, she straightened up and opened her Word program. For ten minutes she sat her mind a blank.
She looked over her syllabus and her notes, trying to decide what her paper should entail. For days, she had scrutinized over this assignment because it was a major part of her grade for the class. She still had no idea; she did not even have an outline. Julie put her head down on the desk. “Just breathe,” she told herself. The ringing phone jarred her back to reality. It was her mother. She glanced at the clock, and decided to let the voicemail get it. After a minute, she noticed the blinking light from the answering machine. “What if it’s something important? Or what if something is wrong?” Slowly, she got up from her chair, walked over to the answering machine, and hit the play button.
“Hi, honey. It’s Mom. I just wanted to see how your day was, and to see if you wanted to come over for dinner tonight. Call me when you get a chance. Love you.”

Julie groaned inwardly. She should have known that it was not anything serious. She sent her mom a quick text message, telling her that she could not make it to dinner tonight and would call her tomorrow. Julie made her way back to her seat. “Okay. No more distractions.” She glanced at the clock; an hour and a half had already passed since she got home.
Julie sat at her desk staring at the blinking cursor on the blank sheet. “Why is this so hard? Why can't I just write?!!!” She watched the second hand on the round, black-and-white, wall clock as it moved steadily around the face. The hand made a slight tick-tick-tick as it passed each number. Julie growled at the computer, angry that she could not even begin. She glanced around her room until she noticed her writing journal, untouched for many days now because of this final assignment. Frustrated and believing she had nothing to lose; Julie went to her journal and began to thumb through the pages. She skimmed her journal entries, reading slower and slower the more she read. Finally, she flipped back to the first page on her journal. She smiled inwardly remembering the first day she wrote in her journal. “Class, I want you to do an exercise. I want you to write for 10 minutes without stopping. Do not pause to correct grammar, spelling, or worry about completing your thoughts.” said Mrs. Glenn, the teacher of her Creative Writing class. “When you free write, you never know what will develop.” Julie closed her journal and thought back over the advice Mrs. Glenn had offered during the course. She walked slowly to her desk, opened the top drawer to her old, wooden desk, and pulled out some lined paper. She looked for a pencil to write with, eventually finding one hidden under the stacks of textbooks littering her desktop. She took the long, newly sharpened pencil in hand, set the alarm on her cell phone for 10 minutes, and began to write. As the words are cleared from her head, an idea began to develop, and the words began to pour from her mind to the paper. Her hand flew across the paper and when the alarm began to beep, she did not hear it. As Julie sat at her desk with her pencil and paper, writing her random thoughts down on paper she realized that it was becoming less complicated as it had seemed very complicated when she first sat down at her desk to begin the assignment. For ten minutes she wrote thoughts of her childhood, her teenage years and what she was experiencing in her life being a college student. By the time she notices that her ten minutes were up and that she had gone a little over her time limit she had written two pages of thoughts. She had covered the entire front page and the entire back page with memories from events of her life. Before Julie knew it she had what she need to complete her assignment. When Julie finished brainstorm she read what she had written down, she realized that the assignment was not as hard as she thought it was. After she read what she had written she noticed a few spelling and grammar errors that need to be corrected. After make corrections and add her finishing touch, she thought to herself “Good Job. This was a piece of cake after all.”