Last Week #54 - Taking Steps Forward

I have moved forward with my novel, more than I have in a while. I was able to devote a few consecutive hours in a row to the novel one day and I was really happy with my progress. I do wish that I had turned off my phone though. My girlfriend had about a hundred questions (only a slight exhaggeration) about her baby and sleeping. As a concerned friend and parent of 2, I had to answer. I digress. I think I like what I wrote.

I also went to my writer's group this week. It had been a while. The last couple sessions, I had family things that needed to be taken care of. I'm back in it now. Hopefully there won't be any more breaks until the summer (when the group itself takes a break).

I wrote one bit that people seemed to like. It's totally rough, unedited, but I like it and thought I'd include it here.

    The floor creaked. Slow steps were heard. Sophie opened her eyes to the blackness of her bedroom. She tried not to listen, to go back to sleep, but she couldn’t. She tried not to concentrate, but that only made her focus more. She listed. Another creak, another sound of slow steps.

It was probably just her parents. Going to the kitchen, going somewhere, not wanting to wake her up.  But why hadn’t the steps stopped.  She heard them again. They should be in their room. It wasn’t a long hallway. Maybe it was her brother. Nick probably just need to go to the bathroom and didn’t wan to wake anyone. Sophie almost scoffed at herself. That didn’t sound like her brother. He would walk across the hall, bump into something and maybe slam the bathroom door. Plus, she hadn’t heard a flush. All she could her was her own breathing and other creaking of the floor.

Should she get up and look? No. That was stupid. Plus, that was her parents’ job. They made sure the doors and windows were locked. They checked under the bed for monsters. Sophie wanted to run to them, wanted to tell them what she heard, but she would have to leave her room and go out into the hallway. She couldn’t go out into the hallway, because whatever was there hadn’t left yet.