Renada Styles

1. What is your name (real or otherwise)? Renada Styles
2. Describe your writing style in three words. occurs without thought
3. How long have you been writing online? 7 years
4. Which, if any, other writing challenges do you participate in? none
5. Describe one way in which you could improve your writing. more diligence to editing
6. What is the best writing advice you’ve ever been given? Life is not without words, so speak, whether it be with your tongue, hand or ink.
7. Who is your favorite author? of the moment, Chuck Palahniuk
8. How do you make time to write? I sit and write when it occurs to me to sit and write, whether it be from want or need.
9. Give us one word we should consider using as a prompt. bouquet
10. Direct us to one blog post of yours that we shouldn't miss reading. I've no blog; however, here is the first part of a piece I have been attempting to write for some time.  Due to a lack of diligence, it may never see more than the 4 short parts thus far written:
    1

    Where am I? What is this strange place? Must it be a dream? Must this pain building in my chest and mind be a reaction to nightmares?

    Oh, I wish it were so.

    Any moment, I'll wake and be resting in my bed. The sheets crisp and clean; the smell muggy and sterilized; the walls and floors a pristine white camouflaging the cupboards and dressers.

    Never once have I thought Room 242B a welcoming place; but, compared to this realm of terror, it is beautiful and magnificent.

    
    

    
    

    I shuffle around this new whiteness, the blinding ceaseless white world I now travel. Hours? Days? Years?

    Or mere moments?

    Time seems to not exist in this infinity promising nothing but death.......

    I fear that.

    That final end. That end to who I am....

    This disease I possess (that crawls through my veins, nips at my heart, and drowns my hopes in its blood) is nothing compared to the imminent terror that presently has stricken my soul. The drops of morphine I am allotted every once an hour at least quelled the physical agony; but, here, I have no artificial pain reliever.

    My mind and body crumple.

    I'm a little ball on the floor.

    Is this even a floor?

    Everything is the same white. Just me in whiteness... Perhaps, this is the light of death?

    Have I already succumbed to my illness and fallen prey to my fear?

    No.

    My heart is still beating. It is beating so quickly that my chest burns. Where is the nurse? The doctor? The old lady in the bed next to mine?

    “Moth-“ I hack from the strain of speech. Has it truly been that long since I've spoken?

    My throat feels like cracking cement in the middle of July.

    “Father?” The word comes out now. Rough, jagged. Is this my voice? No. It cannot be. Where is my voice? Water. Yes, water will bring back the proper intonations. Where is water?

    This change of thought from want to need saves me, even if for a moment, from the pain of fear. I must concentrate on water. Where can I find water?