getting into writing sprints

Unlike actual running, writing sprints is something that intrigues me. If it means I can train myself to be a faster, more efficient and focused writer, then I'm ready to sprint sprint sprint (aka type type type). I like the idea of resisting the pull to click away from my manuscript or outline or draft.

So, without further procrastination: I'm setting a timer for five minutes (baby steps!) to write Professor Robert Lyons' backstory. Here goes!

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Robert Lyons had called Star's End home for two centuries. Yet, he didn't look a day over forty-seven.

That was the age when he first got lost in a rumbling forest and came out disoriented, bleeding and lost in a strange town. It wasn't on any of the maps, of that he was certain. And yet, people lived here. They were well fed and happy and thriving. He limped into the nearest home on the outskirts of the woods and was immediately given food and shelter by the kind farmers who lived there. After regaining his strength and gaining employment at the college, Robert Lyons began researching the many strange phenomena of the town he'd observed so far.

It was like no other place he'd ever been, and he'd been so many places. It didn't feel evil, yet evil was attracted to Star's End on numerous occasions. There were unexplained deaths and disappearances. Yet, people stayed. The town didn't suffer.

One day, after work he felt the pull to return to the mysterious forest that led him here. He wandered its depths for hours, taking mental notes of all that he passed and saw. At last, he sat down to rest after many lost hours. He heard the faintest tinkling noise and looked around for its source. That's when he discovered the tree trunk filled with shimmering, living light, puffing out in sparks that shot up to the sky. He rose from the ground, kept his eyes trained on the sky, and ran to see where the stream was going. When he arrived at the edge of the forest, he watched the stream of impossible sparkles burst to cover every inch of town. Every crop, every house, every building. The whole town was bathed in the faintest ethereal light that seemed to vibrate.

For weeks, then months, he returned to the forest every day to study the sparkling light and follow its path. He talked to everyone in town, dug through books and notes and manuscripts searching for the source of this light. He grew to believe that it was the source of the town's success.

While preoccupied with the source of this light one night, he looked up to see the most horrifying creature with translucent skin, limp gray hair and cold blue eyes. It was standing in front of a black hole, as if climbing through.

"Away, creature!" He shouted before his voice caught in this throat and his limbs turned to ice.