This present job, however, is not just a nose job or a kidney transplant. Oh, those still need to be done. This is also, however, going to require something closer to a full body skin graft. The meat of the story? Still love it. The writing style? Well... it has its moments, but let's just say I whipped this manuscript out in a hot hurry to meet a deadline, so it lacks a little in eloquence in a few places. That works out in my favor, really (or so I'm telling myself), because sometimes I can get so caught up in what I want to say that I forget to pay attention to how I say it. Now I'm going to be thinking about every single word.
All of this to say I've got work to do on a story I'm really excited about. (Good thing the husband is going off to his friend's house to shoot lots of guns and work on his truck's brakes all day tomorrow, because I'm going to be busy this weekend.) Since I'm a helpless perfectionist who can't leave well enough alone, by the time I finish, I will undoubtedly go back and change half of the revisions I made, and then make several more adjustments once I next see the manuscript again. But there's nothing better than the read-through after the revisions are done when I can finally think, "That's the story I wanted to tell."
Have a little sneak preview of the opening:
Instinctively she fought up, up, up through the darkness. Warm
earth yielded to heat and light just as the last of her acorn crumbled away, and
she stretched taller, her radicle rooting deeper into the soil to steady her tender young body. The light made something in her soul sing, made her spread her
cotyledons wide and raise her face to the sun. When she was still deep within
the dirt, buried inside her seed, this brightness had called to her more
powerfully than a siren's song and filled her with the joy of life.
Drys, a voice not
her own whispered deep within her consciousness.
That is my name,
she thought. Pleased, Drys whispered back to the earth her recognition: Mother.
*~*~*
The first drops of rain terrified her. Each giant sphere of
water, fully the length of one cotyledon and with much larger mass, fell with
nearly enough force to break her in half. Yet when the storm raged, she
remained firmly rooted in the earth, as straight and tall as she was able only
three days out of the acorn, and her fear abated. Although she was merely a seedling,
she was strong.
Drink, her mother's
voice commanded, gentle with the love she bore for all her children, yet stern
enough to be heard over the crashing fall of rain and the wild whistle of wind
through branches and leaves far above. Drys stretched forth each tiny filament
of root she had grown and drank deeply.
No fear greeted the first flash of lightning. The sharp,
metallic scent preceding it, the dazzling streak through the sky, the
shaking of the air that followed all left her trembling. A shiver of excitement
rippled down her stem, and a throbbing filled the buds that had begun to swell
with her first leaves.
Masculine laughter rolled through her mind. You enjoy the bolts of Zeus, do you? The
voice was deep and dangerous, rumbling like the thunder that cracked the night
open in the wake of his lightning. I knew
you would, my child. You do not fear the storm. That is why you will be my mouthpiece.
Mouthpiece? she
asked, quivering no longer because of the lightning.
Listen carefully for
my voice while you grow, he commanded. I
shall speak through you.
Breathing deeply, she stilled her trembling cotyledons. Yes, Father.
Okay, back to work I go. ^__^ (Fire and Lightning is due for publication November 28.)
No comments:
Post a Comment