Novel In Progress

“So soft and cold the horrible memory descends; most unwelcome it clips the present happiness—what little there is—and shrouds all future thought until it passes over and through. Like a cancer it may leave, but only for a time before it returns, and this time with all the smashing powers of heaven, or as is most wont, with all the fires and pain of hell.

See that darkening sky all those years ago, the last of the sun’s embers burning away into the ebony sheet of night. The plains here are dry and bleak, and brown grass crackles in the surging wind. Here, along the gravel road bordered with miles of stake-and-line fencing, nothing is heard but the occasional rustle of a tumbleweed bouncing in the breeze and the clinking of an old sign clinging to the fence by a solitary rusted loop as it flops up and down striking the barbed wire.”

These are the opening paragraphs (so far) of my first novel. I’m really loving this process, letting the words take me where they will. At this point I’m still churning out loads of unnecessary verbiage on the way to a completed first draft, but I’m amazed at how, with love and care, my characters seem to me to be telling the story to me. I don’t mean that in a crazy, schizophrenic way, but in a way in which they all seem to be shouting for this to be written down. I guess we’ll see.

Oh, and I’m not using a typewriter. Maybe one day I’ll graduate to one…

 First Novel: 1st Draft

words: 53,000 / 150,000 (35%)