Fiction Final Draft
11/20/06

Taking a Chance

It had been a long time since she felt like she had her life all together.  One dead-end job after another, it seemed to Sarah that after working so hard to pay her own way through college things would change.  Always a constant source of encouragement during these difficult times were the words her Grandmother always used to say to her and that was, “when life gives you lemons, just make lemonade!”.  She tried to be a person who set goals and worked on them.  The two goals that were at the top of her list was to be able to get into an apartment in a better part of town and to have a stable job that was close to home.

While reading the job ads one day Sarah decided to take a chance on applying for a junior accounting position with a major business complex, in a favorable part of town.  She knew the competition would be fierce for such a job, but to her surprise she landed an interview.  After making it through a difficult interview, she found herself in the job of her dreams.  Sarah was on cloud nine; maybe her luck was finally taking a turn for the better.  This new job opportunity would finally allow Sarah to relocate herself to a better apartment because now she could afford it.  Her life now seemed to be settling down and she had even made some new friends.

Standing at the counter of their companies newly remodeled break room, Sarah poured herself a cup of morning coffee in her favorite cup and asked her new friend Kathy about her weekend.  

Kathy replied, “I really did not do much, I just cleaned up my apartment and rented a movie.  What did you do this weekend?”

“Well I decided to go shopping for a couple of outfits for work because I really need some new work clothes, the clothes I have are really outdated”.  A couple of minutes later Sarah and Kathy decided to head back to their cubicle to start their day.

Things had been going well at Sarah’s new job and she had recently completed her first year on her job.  Then one day rumors began to surface that alluded to the possibility of her company laying off a couple of people, supposedly to cut expenses.  

“Kathy are the rumors true that I’ve been hearing in the break room?”  She was worried because she knew that when a company had to consider doing this unpleasant task it usually involved the last people hired.  This terrified Sarah because she knew she was one of those three people and the prospects of her keeping her job did not look good.

“Well it is hard to say, but if I had to guess Sarah, I would say that the company is just in a rough spot and everything will end up resolving itself”.  To Sarah, Kathy’s viewpoint did little to resolve Sarah’s feelings of apprehension.  At least her friend Kathy’s job was safe because she had been with the company for five years.  

The effects of this rumor continued to plague Sarah’s mind for weeks to come and the amount of worrying she was doing had caused her to lose a lot of sleep.  When she was at work the obvious tension in the air kept everyone pretty much in an all-business mode the sharks seemed to be zeroing in on their prey.  Even Kathy, who was normally one of the people who contributed to their vibrant office environment, was acting more subdued.  

Late one evening, Sarah decided to call Kathy at home and asked her opinion on their company’s plans.  “Hi Kathy, Are you busy? I won’t keep you but a minute.”

“Oh hello Sarah, what’s wrong, it sounds like something is really bothering you!”  

In a worried tone, Sarah says, “Well I’m really concerned about being one of the people that the company lets go.  This is the best job that I’ve ever had and I don’t want to loose it.”  

Trying to comfort her, Kathy says in a reassuring voice, “Sarah, I know you are worried, I have been in your situation before.  Our company thought of doing this about five years ago and their plans fell apart”.  All of this sounded like it should put her mind at ease, but all Sarah could thinks about was, “I hope I can make lemonade out of all of this!”

Their conversation from the night before seemed to put Sarah’s mind somewhat at ease, but because she was a person who tended to dwell on things, like her mother, she felt she needed to find something to keep her mind busy.  Remembering that the storage closet off of her patio really needed to be straightened out, she made her way outside.  

Opening the doors to the closet she saw that besides her washer and dryer, it was not as messy as she remembered, but she decided to work on it anyway.  There amongst her large suitcase, the one she used to visit her aunt and uncle in Tyler was her mop, basic toolkit which included a hammer and a screw driver, and other items that she used to keep up her apartment.  However, she did find a couple of things that she had long forgotten about and that was the two fishing poles that used to be her grandparents.  These poles were amongst the many items that Sarah had kept because they reminded her of the great times that she and her sister, Julie had spent with their grandparents.

Their grandparents had passed on, so all of their memories were even more special to them.  One particular fishing trip with her sister and her grandmother stood out in Sarah’s memory because it was not any ordinary fish trip.  They decided to try a different fishing spot one day and go wade-fishing.  As she began to smile, her mind wandered to that place in time;

There were a lot of good fishing spots in and around the bay where our grandparent’s beach house was located.  However, there was one spot that we had not tried in a long time.  Before we left we made sure that we had all of our fishing gear and we had decided that we would stop for bait at the local bait shop on the way.  Even though the water was fairly calm, my sister and I were always a little leery of what lurked below the surface of the water when we went wade-fishing.  I guess we were letting our imaginations get the best of us.  It is kind of like all of the times we would run and jump in the bed at night because we just knew some slimy monster was lurking under our bed.  However, both mother and Grandmother always did their best to assure us that we were going to be fine.

From the shore we started to walk out into the water to a spot that was about waist high and it soon became apparent that it might not be as easy to get to that good fishing spot as my grandmother had remembered.  Each time we took a step our sneakers would sink down in the silty sand past our ankles and it seemed that we might not make it out there.  To make matters worse, each time one of us tried to pull our leg up to take a step, the water would make a gurgle/burp sound and make our giggles worse.  Making our way out into the water we realized that we would have to make sure each of us didn’t fall down in the water.  With each step we took, my sister and I just knew we would lose our shoe to the slimy sand monster below.  This went on for about ten minutes as we finally reached our fishing spot.

It was time to put the bait on our hook and catch the “Big One”!  In no time at all, my sister had caught several fish and my grandmother had caught one.  When they caught their fish they would put them on their stringer, which would float a few feet away from them.  It was no surprise that my sister had caught several fish already; she always had better luck catching fish than I did.

It was getting to be late in the afternoon and my grandmother thought we better head in.  We reeled up our lines and started to head back through the silty sand and all of the sudden I felt something lightly bump my leg.  

“I think something just bumped my leg Grandmother.  I think it was a big fish”!  

With a look of curiosity of their face they said, “It’s probably nothing.”

Being the worrying type to a certain degree, my imagination got the best of me as I attempted to run out of the water.  I just knew there was a big fish just waiting to take a big bite out of me!  It was like a slow motion movie, I felt like I was running on top of the water, when in fact I was slowly drudging my way back to the bank.

I paused for a moment at turned around to see if they were shared my concern and to my surprise I see my Grandmother and sister faces of observation turned to faces that were laughing hysterically.

After what seemed an eternity, I reached the shore and with tears of laughter running down their faces they soon followed.  It turned out that the mysterious bump against my leg turned was nothing, but we all laughed about that fishing trip for days!

Realizing that she had been standing there holding one of the fishing poles for about five minutes with a big smile on her face; she finally put it back in the corner of the closet and closed the door.  The closet was finally cleaned up to Sarah’s satisfaction and she decided to turn in for the evening.  As she drifted off to sleep, she tried to relax and believe that the new work week ahead would bring good news.

What started off as a restful night sleep for Sarah, ended up being another restless night because of a bad dream about her work and her feelings of apprehension. She was dreaming about her favorite fishing trip that had come to her mind earlier in the day.  Dwelling on that mysterious bump on her leg, her eyes begin to play tricks on her and she thinks she sees a shark fin swimming in her direction.  She wiped her eyes in disbelief as it seemed to be getting closer and closer.  Then it was upon her, swimming circles around her as if it was preparing to attack.  Frozen with fear, her mind thought she was running faster than she had ever run in her life, when in fact she could not move an inch.

Suddenly she woke up in a cold sweat, sitting straight up in her bed, her heart was racing and she realized she had kicked her covers off onto the floor.  “I have got to get a hold of myself, the stress of worrying about my job is out of control,” Sarah said to herself as she took several deep breaths.  As she sat in bed staring out the window of her bedroom, her Grandmother’s sweet, assuring voice settled into her thoughts and reminded her that she needed to put “lemons” on her grocery list.  A renewed strength of confidence came over her and it was at that moment she realized everything was going to be alright.  

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Revision Account

Overall I would rate my experience of writing a fiction piece as being a good success.  In the beginning I had a great deal of stress and apprehension in deciding the subject matter, but I knew that I wanted it to be some type of story that incorporated one of the funny, memorable moments of my life.  This is the first fiction piece that I have ever written and it was a nerve wracking experience preparing to present in front of the class.  However, my misgivings were soon put to rest with positive remarks and suggestions for change/clarity.  

Most of this story I made up so that I could lead into one of the many fun and unpredictable fishing trips of my youth with my grandparents.  It was a challenge, but I think my daydreaming sequence in my story added a different twist to an otherwise predictable outcome.

One of the most critical areas in my piece that I found that I needed the most work was in creating dialogue to help the story to move along.  The “dialogue” aspect of writing is definitely an area, for me at least, that takes a great deal of thought and practice.  Regarding this issue, I received several good comments from the class and Dr. White as to how I might develop certain areas of my story.  One of the areas involved the interaction between Sarah and Kathy which I revised by breaking up the paragraphs to involve clear dialogue transitions.  Another recommendation was to add some dialogue in my “fishing trip” reflection story.  I did not add dialogue between me, my sister and grandmother; I decided to only develop the statements that revealed my feelings in order to show that the story was from my perspective.

I feel that my piece in its final draft is definitely in a more cohesive state with the recommended revisions as well as my own re-evaluation process.  This piece is not a part of a larger piece of work.  I consider this piece a valuable step into the right direction of developing more works of fiction.