10-Minute Writing Exercise #3

It's that time again; time to engage the brain in something different to spark new ideas. These 10-minute exercises are an excellent way to prevent the mind from becoming stagnant. By dedicating 10 minutes to focus on something entirely different, I've managed to avoid falling into a creative "rut". Writer's block can be one of the most frustrating and challenging obstacles to overcome. While I can't promise these exercises are a surefire solution, they have been quite beneficial for me. They allow my brain to step away and think about something completely new, enjoying the process without worrying about structure, word count, or story continuity.

Today's word was Bleed, and after seeing it, I had quite a few ideas, but the following is what my brain decided to write. I think it is quite a nice concept and could be something interesting to develop.

As you can see, I exceeded the time limit by a few seconds with this one. However, as I've mentioned in earlier posts, the timer is not fixed, and going over it isn't an issue. It serves merely as a flexible guideline to encourage quick thinking.

This was it; surrounded. Nowhere to go. For the longest time we had been able to survive by running, hiding, and, when we did fight, we used guerilla tactics and never got close enough for there to be an issue. This was different. They were close enough that we could smell the acrid odour coming from the abominations. The drool, clinging to their long, gnarled teeth; Hanging down like gelatinous stalactites. The murmured growls and strange noises they made sent shockwaves through our bodies, like that of a loud, heavy bass drum, but this... this was sickening. Their large heads trembled and twitched as they loomed ever closer.

We were being pushed back; a rockface behind meant there was no way to go, so, if we were going to survive this, we needed to go through them, but how? Our weapons were useless at this range. Sure, we could most likely kill them all. But if we did that, we’d be dead by the morning anyway. We couldn’t use them; we couldn’t make them bleed. We were too close and even if we covered our faces, we were in the range that the spores in the blood could bury into our skin. No, we needed another way, a way through without making them bleed. Harvey tried throwing everything he could grab from his pockets in a vain distraction attempt, which we all knew wouldn’t work. There was really only one way, someone was going to have to fight while the others fled.