Writer's Weekly Spring 2012 24-Hour Short Story contest was this weekend. How it works is that they send you a writing prompt and maximum word count. Then, obviously, you have 24 hours to write a story that at least touches on that topic. (Everybody gets the same topic and word count.)

Below was this weekend's topic:

With blistered, salty skin and matted hair, they were down to their last sips of fresh water. A recreational day at sea had turned into a fight for continued existence. Slumped on the bow, searching for any hint of a breeze to soothe her burning face, her eyes widened when she noticed something fast approaching in the distance...

Word count: 875

You don't have to quote the topic, just touch on it in some way. I have mixed feelings about my entry on which I'll briefly mention later. But one thing I did feel good about was that I didn't write an obvious extension of the topic which is a strategy that helps separate you from the hundreds of similarly themed and obvious stories which they will receive (you hope anyway.)

My entry is below:

For Whom the Belle Tolls

All eyes have been on me since my arrest.  If only I had been killed instead of captured, I could have escaped into downright obscurity and namelessness. But now I’ve been named.  In the North, they call me “Bushwhacker Belle” and tell stories about the plotting vixen that unleashed all kinds of evil and cowardly plans aimed at their beloved, Yankee soldiers.  In the South, Belle Compton is the heroic woman who dedicated her entire being to The Cause.  I surely don’t know who has the right idea about me, but I do know I can do without all that embellishment.

I guess people can make you into a symbol in order to avoid doing the hard work of finding out the underlying truth about yourself. God knows I’m much more useful to them as a symbol than I am as a human being. 

While I sit in my cell awaiting trial, it’s hard to believe that, just a short time ago; I hadn’t even cared one way or the other about this conflict. You see, in our town of Shelton, North Carolina, we identified ourselves much more as mountain people than Southerners.  Like anybody, all we wanted was to live in peace. Despite everything, we thought we could. But sometimes in life you’re not rewarded for your optimism. 

Pretty quick after the war started, life in Shelton became terrifying because of all the raids the Yankee soldiers subjected us to.  You see, when most people think about the war, they think about the big battles. They don’t ever think of what happens on the fringes. But I it’s all I ever think about.  I lived on the fringes.  It was on the fringes where my neighbor’s houses got burned to the ground for being suspected

sympathizers. It was on the fringes where my livestock was stolen as punishment for what the Confederates did to somebody somewhere else. It was on the fringes where I watched my only child starve to death because of everything those Yankees done. 

Mentioning my little Eliza is intolerably difficult for me. Though thoughts of her are forever in my mind, I don’t like talking about her or especially her demise.  But I suspect that most people don’t often engage in frequent conversation about the worst tragedies of their lives.  I know if I start in about how wonderful a little girl she was and start describing her and whatnot that I’ll let feelings of pain and loneliness escape from a place somewheres deep inside me and those feelings of loss will threaten to swallow me whole.  So, given that, there is only one thing I can say.

She was everything.

When I lost Eliza, I lost everything. 

When Eliza passed, my journey here began. The way I figured it, after she was gone there was no reason to stay in Shelton any longer. I travelled on foot from town to town looking for any opportunity to thwart those Yankee bastards and it didn’t take too long before I fell in with a group of renegade Confederates. Oh, we’d find much recreation in all kinds of subterfuge such as cutting telegraph wires, sabotaging Union railways, and the like.

I must say I enjoyed my recreation on land much more than on the sea. That’s probably because it was on the sea that I was caught. I was guiding a log through the bay in Charleston trying to float a bomb near a Union ship in the blockade. Somehow they knew our plans and were ready for us. I was picked up by a skiff full of armed Yankees and now I find myself here.

And, of course, I have become a symbol of Confederate villainy to some and Southern heroism to others.  But I wonder where the real truth lies. Does Bushwhacker Belle really exist?  And if so, what happens to regular ol’ Belle Compton? Does she exist no longer?

My day of reckoning is soon and I’m not sure which one of me I should be going forward.  If I choose Belle Compton, then I’ll have to accept my ultimate fate with all the southern grace and dignity I can muster.  If I play the part of Bushwhacker Belle, well, I’ll have to devise a treacherous plan of escape and kill as many Yankees as possible on the way out. 

But the more I ponder these options, the more I realize that, either way, I’m meeting my end in the hands of the enemy.  In death I’d still be the villainous Confederate or the Southern martyr. Dying on someone else’s terms and being defined by them afterwards is just something that I cannot abide. 

It’s clear to me now that the only hands to usher me into the afterlife are my own.
I always thought my final resting place was off somewhere in the distance, but I can now see it approaching faster than ever before. And now it’s my aspiration to severely limit the days between this one and that. 

I know when it’s all said and done that my body won’t be with Eliza’s.  And I don’t know if I’ll see Eliza on the other side, but I’m optimistic.

It’s the only way to exist.

Mixed feelings:

I'm never comfortable writing in first person as I fear I'm telling and not showing. I can set a story in motion and move it along, but writing with pretty details and making the words interesting is not my strong suit. But this can also be affected by the word count and time limit. Secondly, I don't think I'm really qualified to get all existential and felt my attempt in doing so was a bit on the silly side.

On the positive side, I like that I didn't do a story of someone literally lost at sea that gets rescued by spies or aliens. I'm really excited that I did my own thing. And I think I had a good ending (at least I hope so.)

Overall I think I was trying to hit a certain note, but it just came out flat. It's most likely due to a lack of tension which I think would relate back to telling and not showing.