Retreat!

I’ve had two retreats, two weekends in a row. The first one — last weekend — was a ladies’ retreat for church, and came after a couple of extremely busy weeks, so it was nice to spend some time away with people I loved, and take a little time to breathe and worship God. That one was at a house by the ocean.

This weekend was my favorite Christian writing retreat in the mountains, in the complete opposite direction from the other one. It was restful, cozy, worshipful, and productive. I wrote over 11,000 words of a story I might eventually publish, but for now am just enjoying the telling of. I love the characters, I love making them interact, and they are very useful for catharsis when I’m going through stressful life events — because I can make their lives far more stressful than mine, so that mine doesn’t look nearly as bad by comparison. 😆

I also wrote a little 200-word scene for a contest we had during the retreat. It was a “Worst of the Worst” contest, and the three categories to choose from were Worst Kiss, Worst Action Scene, and Worst Fantasy Monster. Only two of us entered (it’s not a big retreat, and not too structured so we can feel free to concentrate on writing or doing the things that free our minds to write better), so we both won prizes.

Here is my “Worst Action Scene”, for your reading pleasure. 😉

Deep in a mud puddle, somewhere nearby, lives an amoeba. It is a lone amoeba, wandering to and fro, traveling great centimeters, on an adventure. Until suddenly it spies, tenths of millimeters away, another amoeba heading its way—moving at a high rate of speed. If they don’t change course now, in mere quarters of an hour they shall surely collide.

“Beware!” the first amoeba calls out to its speeding counterpart. “Or we shall surely crash!”

“I can’t stop!” the other amoeba replies. “You will have to move first!”

The first amoeba is panicking now. Whole minutes have passed, and they have moved dangerously close. Half a millimeter separates them, and if amoebas could sweat, they would both have produced buckets.

Closer and closer they get, until they can see the whites of their nuclei. But, at the very last sixty seconds, they slide one hundredth of a micrometer to either side, floating past each other by a cilia’s breadth.

If amoebas had hearts, they might have stopped. If they weren’t already so, they would have wet themselves. It is such a close encounter, they will remember it for hours—or at least until the puddle dries up.

THE END

I’m going to go write more of my other story now. I could probably expound on my last two wonderful weekends, or the crazy things going on in life right now, but I don’t want to. My characters have more angst to work out.

‘Night!