Trying to get back Beneath the Surface
In February this year I was sitting on the lounge, just zoning out, when the beginnings of a new story burst into the dark corners of my mind. It's a science fiction story, which makes sense, given how much I just love speculative fiction. I've never written speculative fiction before, largely because I know that it's a lot harder than it might sound and I may very well lack the skill to do so.
I spent about a week madly fleshing out 12,000 words of chapter planning and summary. The story from start-to-finish was all laid out. After that, I started writing the first draft.
The first draft is sitting at around 22,000 words now. I'd made a good start overall. Though what I have needs a lot of work, of course.
Term two hit. Any other teachers out there understand what I mean by that. I mean that for two weeks, every single class I teach had a half yearly exam that I then needed to mark and provide feedback for. Following those, the reports for every class were due. I am just about finished with it all, but I've had no time to even look at my draft. The characters have been stuck, just waiting for me.
Looking back at it this morning, the story has become a stranger again. I'm still exhausted from being an adult, so the creative flow is trapped behind a wall of responsibility. I love this book though, and it needs to be written. The plan is to do some editing on what I already have, to find some slight improvements that can be made and reconnect with the Quadrant Four Colony. I'll leave you with two ideas about my little project:
1. I finally have a working title. It may change, but this is the first time the manuscript has had a name: Beneath the Surface.
2. An excerpt from Ch. 9:
The familiar scents of the Outsider zone were a small comfort to Aziel, as her eyes struggled to adjust to the opalescent light clawing at her face. Two protectors escorted Aziel to her living quarters, a third trailing behind them. The man to her right, the one who reminded her of a cartoon horse she’d seen in a picture book once, squeezed her upper arm at the site of a yellowing bruise the size of his hand. Locations across her arms, chest, stomach and back competed for attention, crying out with each step. The searing pain across her upper ribs was the most insistent, sending waves of electricity through her chest each time she breathed in. Aziel’s legs seemed to have escaped the onslaught that came both before and after the isolation, though the pads of her feet had been stripped of their top layers of skin. That discomfort was self-inflicted though, the result of wall-kicking in a space no larger than a sanitation cubicle.
I spent about a week madly fleshing out 12,000 words of chapter planning and summary. The story from start-to-finish was all laid out. After that, I started writing the first draft.
The first draft is sitting at around 22,000 words now. I'd made a good start overall. Though what I have needs a lot of work, of course.
Term two hit. Any other teachers out there understand what I mean by that. I mean that for two weeks, every single class I teach had a half yearly exam that I then needed to mark and provide feedback for. Following those, the reports for every class were due. I am just about finished with it all, but I've had no time to even look at my draft. The characters have been stuck, just waiting for me.
Looking back at it this morning, the story has become a stranger again. I'm still exhausted from being an adult, so the creative flow is trapped behind a wall of responsibility. I love this book though, and it needs to be written. The plan is to do some editing on what I already have, to find some slight improvements that can be made and reconnect with the Quadrant Four Colony. I'll leave you with two ideas about my little project:
1. I finally have a working title. It may change, but this is the first time the manuscript has had a name: Beneath the Surface.
2. An excerpt from Ch. 9:
The familiar scents of the Outsider zone were a small comfort to Aziel, as her eyes struggled to adjust to the opalescent light clawing at her face. Two protectors escorted Aziel to her living quarters, a third trailing behind them. The man to her right, the one who reminded her of a cartoon horse she’d seen in a picture book once, squeezed her upper arm at the site of a yellowing bruise the size of his hand. Locations across her arms, chest, stomach and back competed for attention, crying out with each step. The searing pain across her upper ribs was the most insistent, sending waves of electricity through her chest each time she breathed in. Aziel’s legs seemed to have escaped the onslaught that came both before and after the isolation, though the pads of her feet had been stripped of their top layers of skin. That discomfort was self-inflicted though, the result of wall-kicking in a space no larger than a sanitation cubicle.
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