Short Story

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 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 more slowly 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 than it had seemed when she first sat down at her desk. For ten minutes she wrote thoughts of her childhood, her teenage years, and what she was experiencing in her life as a college student. By the time she noticed that her 10 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 and back pages with memories from events of her life. Before Julie knew it she had what she needed to complete her assignment. When Julie finished brainstorming, 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, after make corrections and add her finishing touch, she thought, "Good Job. This was a piece of cake after all."

She quickly attacked