100 Words for 100 Days: Day 1

So I joined the 100 Words for 100 Days Challenge, and today is day 1! At first I was a little leery at being able to keep up with the pace. I thought, "if I haven't written anything in a week, how am I supposed to magically write 100 words today?". But then I sat down and opened up a new document and forced myself to focus and look at the book as a whole. 

I am currently tearing apart my novel for the 4th major revision. I am at a point in the beginning of the book where I am stuck because I've backed myself into a corner and am struggling to get myself out of it. So, I decided to set that scene to the side for now and skip forward. 

It's about to look l like I'm getting side tracked, but I promise this is relevant: 

Wednesday night we watched The Great Gatsby (with Leonard DiCaprio) for the first time. I had forgotten how sad that story is and how amazing F. Scott Fitzgerald is at weaving a tragic story. I hope that one day I can convey that much emotion into my characters, and have a story that haunts people for days after they have finished it. 

That being said, the soundtrack was hauntingly beautiful. My two favorite songs were:

Young & Beautiful by Lana Del Ray 
Over the Love by Florence +The Machine 

I think these artists convey so much emotion in their voice when singing, it's hard not to feel the emotion flowing through you. I like using pieces like this when writing emotional scenes, because I am in a similar state of mind as the characters in my book. I feel more "connected" to the scene I am writing. 

That being said, here's my first 100 words (actually, 138 to be exact! Take that, challenge!): 

             She stared at the bedroom’s stone wall, her eyes unfocused. The sun was creeping through the high slit of a window behind her, the color slowly sliding down the wall. The dawn had come, just like any other morning. But her parents would not see this sunrise; would not feel the warmth of the sunlight against their back. The world had kept on turning, without so much as a second thought as to the lives it had lost.
            Her father’s lifeless gaze flashed in her mind’s eye and she flinched against the white hot pain. She pulled her bent knees into her chest, her arms wrapping around them as if she could hold herself together if only she squeezed hard enough. The tracks of tears against her cheeks had long since dried, leaving her body hollow and aching.

(Copyright: Brittany Westerdahl, 2013).