#word wheel

[grimreaperheretic]

content warning for an unspecified eating disorder in this one. This ran away from me and the word doesn't even show up, but I think that it does kinda fit.

Word wheel

My word: skinny

It’s not that he doesn’t want to eat. It’s just that he isn’t particularly hungry anymore. He used to like eating, weight always closer to the limit than it should be. He’d gain weight over the breaks, and that was alright because he’d use all the unnecessary fat during the rest of the season. He just likes food a bit more than is good for him.

He’s always had a bit of trouble losing weight, not particularly keen on training and just liking sweet things in general hindering him a bit in that regard. Now he doesn’t have to try anymore. The car is overweight, so the smartest way of making it easier to handle is to make the driver lighter. At the start it’s a bit of a struggle. After a month it comes to him as easy as racing does. He doesn’t have to watch the scale anymore, because the few kilos came easy.

It’s just that now he can’t stop. Or is it start?

There’s food on the plate that he barely touches anymore. He tries a few bites, then he’s done again. The soft tissue on his stomach is slowly disappearing, his abs becoming more visible. He can watch the way the fat fades away, to make place for the car, that carves away more and more from him and his body.

Even his favourite foods are starting to look unappealing, flavour heavy in his mouth, seemingly multiplying while he chews. Each bite he takes is downright revolting.

Sometimes the hunger will crawl up on him, stomach aching, head pounding, but when he makes something, it evaporates the second he lies eyes on the meal. It’s worse when the feeling doesn’t disappear. Then he’s left staring at something, mouth watering, but unable to take even a singular bite in fear of throwing up.

And he can’t stop.

[kpopidolsarehumanstoo]

I just want to share this gem to all my fellow writers. Its actually pretty useful.

[cheshirelibrary]

Find the Perfect Word for Your Feelings with This Vocabulary Wheel

[grimreaperheretic]

bit later than usual but whatever. day 4 of me posting my writing practices as a way to keep me accountable.

My word: Evil

Fernando learned early enough how cruel Formula 1 can be. But he'd managed to come out of the machinery alright, battered and bruised, but functioning and with two championships to show for it. Not everyone can say the same for themselves.

He's watched dozens of bright-eyed kids make it, just to be washed out a few months later, discarded because there was something missing from them. Sometimes that something is talent, sometimes it's a mental thing. Others make it and they become caricatures of their former beings, the world sucking out their truthful selves.

He doesn't particularly care for any of them, watches them from afar as the brightness leaves their eyes and their shoulders harden. Caring is nothing but a burden in these parts.

But when he looks at the Verstappen kid, already hardened, shoulders always tight and his back held straight, father always looming in the back, he feels some kind of warmth, that he was sure he had already banished, rise in his chest. He hasn't cared for a rookie in years, if he ever did. Everywhere he looks the kid is there, a heaviness surrounding him that no seventeen-year-old should carry, eyes nevertheless bright with hope, and so much talent wrapped in his young body that it scares the entire grid.

Fernando has never allowed himself to be intimated by talent. Either you have it or you don't. And not everyone knows how to use it regardless. The kid is still quite reckless but he pulls off maneuvers that have older, more experienced people scratching their heads and he can appreciate that. So he reaches out a hand to him, tries his best to show him the ropes, while the rest of the grid treats him like an evil, cruel thing.

He doesn't know when the kid becomes Max, and when Max becomes his. Some things just happen and he has learned to accept that.

[grimreaperheretic]

this once again does not contain the word but I went on a brain spiral and this happened. maybe all this writing practice is helping me be better with words and being less literal.

word wheel

My word: congratulations

You watch the race on the shitty TV-Screen in your hotel room. You didn't ask if he wanted you there and he didn't say. So now you're here at another race, somewhere you probably couldn't completely correctly point out on a map, but that he wouldn't have a problem finding.

So you watch the race in a lonely hotel room on a TV that crackles and with a connection that is dire at best. It's navy blue in front and papaya chasing for most of the race. He doesn't try anything extra, probably because he knows that it wouldn't work. All three of them want that title, some more desperately than others.

Maybe in another universe red isn't fast enough to catch. Maybe in another universe navy blue and papaya cross the line one right after the other and papaya can whoop and celebrate. But in this one. In this one some kind of miracle gives red the pace it needs. It chases and chases and chases and then. At the very last second. It overtakes. There's orders from the pit walls, to let each other through. In this universe papaya orange refuses.

And when they cross the finish line it comes down to one point. One point and your son has done it again. You're still in your hotel room, but you're not sitting anymore. Instead you stand in stunned silence in front of the TV.

You've always done what you thought was best for him. He was softer than you, more like his mother than you ever wanted, too malleable and kind. But maybe he didn't need your sharp edges and cutting words. You've seen him with his daughter and kind and soft and still ruthless on track. You will not apologize. What's done is done, but maybe you can do something. You don't even know, can't even remember if you've ever told him this. But as he stands there, golden shimmer of victory on his skin and fifth in hand, you grab your phone and you send five words to match his crowns.

“I am proud of you.”

[grimreaperheretic]

I followed @f1reasons example and used their word wheel to write a couple hundred words as writing practice, because I got inspired by @jup1t33r, but only working on my wips doesn't work that well sometimes. I, too, post it so I actually do something instead of only telling myself to do it.

My word: candle

The candle on the table flickers, its light only partly illuminating the room, casting shadows on the walls. Sophie watches it, keeping her eyes on the little flame. When she blinks the shape of it has burnt herself into her retinas.

The clock on the wall ticks quietly in the night. She's not sure what it's exactly that is keeping her up, but there's an itch under her skin she can't quite scratch.

The candle flickers, harder this time, as a warm gust of wind comes through the opened windows, the heavy July air sweet, almost sticky. Sophie gets up to close the window. Nothing can disturb her candle. That much she knows. Her stomach rolls, nervous for no clear discernible reason.

The calendar on the wall declares it the 17th of July 2021. Tomorrow is nothing but another race on the calendar, nothing unusual. She watched the sprint qualifying earlier, her boy on pole for the race tomorrow.

Sophie knows racing. It's in her blood, speed rushing under her skin. Max has his skills from her, not his father. She is sure of it and this gives her the power to believe that he'll win this. He's better than his father ever was, a true menace on the track to anyone in his way.

She still worries before every race. That's what the candle is for. It will protect her boy, give him good luck for the race tomorrow. She's never missed lighting up a candle for him. She's never been so scared of a race either. Sophie hopes that Silverstone is kind to her boy as she forces herself to go to sleep.

It will all be fine. The bad feeling in her stomach disagrees.

[grimreaperheretic]

before I forget, day 7 of spinning the word wheel

My word: confession

When Sebastian remembers the early years of Max's time in the paddock he feels guilty. Not enough for a full confession of guilt, but enough for him to feel the need for an apology bubbling up to make their treatment of him right in some way. He never does speak the apology outloud.

He tried it once, when he and Max met up after a race last year that he had visited. They had sat on one of the tables on the terrace and had just talked, a story here, some words there. Max had talked about how Lily was growing, already a few months old, and there had been a happy glow in his face. He'd mentioned his endurance ventures, how he was thinking of attending the 24 hours of the Nürburgring next year with a group of guys he had handpicked. One of them, he tells Sebastian, was a guy he knew from his one year in F3, before he got the contract with Torro Rosso and entered the paddock as a F1 driver. Sebastian asks for a picture and name, mentions how he might know him if he's Austrian like Max said.

The first picture Max showed him is from an F3 race, where he had stood on the top step and the realization hit Sebastian like a truck. He was a teenager, young even in comparison to the other people in his category, most of them between eighteen and twenty, while Max was only sixteen and still on the top step. Just like in Formula 1.

Max scrolled to a newer picture of Lukas, and words of apology threatened to break out of him, to splurge all over the table. But the moment was fleeting, gone before Sebastian even had a chance. He's not sure he would have said the words anyway. Still there is an image burnt behind his eyelids of a seventeen-year-old carrying all his bags alone, because they had laughed at him, when he asked for help.

[grimreaperheretic]

I'm tired as fuck but posting this anyway: day 8 of spinning the wheel

My word: Spring

Sometimes he compares the car to spring. It probably wouldn't make sense if he ever explained it to anyone else but the car is like a new beginning, a burst of colour and life, the freedom to live infused in everything. Driving is his way to fly and feeling the rumble of an engine beneath his fingers is like a breeze that just carries him higher.

Over the years he's been glad that he at least has this, even when the car is horrible, threatening to cut his wings and throw them away to trample them into the dusty ground. But he can feel that knowledge, his assured trust that at least this will always be a constant, slipping.

He loves driving. It's the one thing he's never had to think about.

But it doesn't feel like freedom anymore, his wings clipped, a dust cloud rising from the gravel. If someone asked him to describe the feeling of driving in one word he would pick spring. He would have picked spring last year and the year before and in all the years before that. He wonders how long he will keep picking spring.

The joy of it is already slipping through his fingers, the glide slippery and unstoppable. It reminds him of watching sand trickle in the hourglass when he was a child, time passing by inexorably.

When he turns to look, his family is missing, gone from the garage and the factory. He's starting to feel caged, his wings clipped with the car.

There's nowhere else to go.

All of them would try to stop him from truly flying, cut his feathers and then hide the scissors to keep him complacent. Here at least he has a chance at fixing things.

He wraps his hands around the halo and pushes himself out. He tries to think of spring and the feeling of wind carrying him far, far away.