The beauty of words

I decided to take on exercise 14, which was to challenge yourself by giving yourself a handicap. When writing, there are many ways to give yourself handicaps, like trying not to use certain words. I challenged myself to write a story without using the words attempt, love, wish, and for.

The air outside began to get that cold bite to it. Winter always brought Sophie great joy. She would spend the holidays with her brother, sister, and her relatives. Christmas was always a joyful time of year, only this year was different. Her grandfather had passed away just a few weeks earlier, right before the Christmas season begun. This had put a great amount of weight on the family’s shoulders. It was like this mist that hung in the air that you couldn’t get rid of. Everyone did their best to put on cheerful faces this season, but it was difficult. Sophie was doing everything she could to keep everyone’s spirits high. She was the one who went out, did all of the Christmas shopping, the cooking, cleaning, everything. This kept her from focusing on the sadness that everyone was feeling because of her grandfather. Her mother had noticed her behavior, how she had taken charge of everything and found it very heartwarming that she would take the initiative to take care of the family since she could not. Sophie’s mother was too wrapped up in grieving over the death of her father. The holidays became less and less important to her. Everyone in her family felt the same way, this season took a toll on everyone and sadness had replaced the happiness and solace that was the Christmas season. Sophie had done a very decent job of taking over. Her brother had helped with the cooking and cleaning while her sister helped with the baking and decorating of the house, getting it ready for celebrating the holiday with the family. Decorating the Christmas tree remained a family activity that they all had participated in. Christmas was only a few days away at this point, things became a bit more hurried and the house looked much more festive. All of the holiday shopping was done, Christmas presents were wrapped and placed under the tree as well. When the fateful day had come, Sophie’s family had woken up to Christmas presents under the tree and spent the morning opening gifts and exchanging words of thanks and warmth. Relatives from all over had come to join in on the Christmas Feast that Sophie had prepared with a bit of help from her siblings. They had all gathered around the table and joined in on the cheerful conversation, refraining from mentioning the passing of a beloved family member. It made Sophie feel better that her hard work had gone to good use and everyone was very satisfied. The somber mood that Sophie was in had lifted, she had joined in on the fun full heartedly instead of pretending like she was before. At the end of the day, Sophie felt much happier again.

this is my general feeling towards my story.

Overall, this challenge wasn’t incredibly difficult, but I liked the idea of having a handicap. It made me try to word my sentences differently instead of using the same words over and over again. This story is definitely not one of my best, but on a short notice, this is what my mind came up with and I ran with it. I’m not too happy with it, but it’s not terrible either.