The Writerly Update: Done, Part Deux
Aug. 28th, 2010 07:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
babarnettAnd the short story rewrite is done! Well, mostly. I still need to give it a once-over for pesky typos and things like that. And I'm not certain the ending is quite right just yet. But overall I'm pleased with how it's turned out. After the first draft, I thought it was going to need a huge amount of work, but as is so often the case, the first draft wasn't anywhere near as bad as I had thought.
Anyway, I'll let it sit a few days and then see if I feel like it needs to be thrown before the critiquing gods. In the meantime, the opening:
And now, back to the novel. *eyes huge stack of TNEO critiques with apprehension*
Anyway, I'll let it sit a few days and then see if I feel like it needs to be thrown before the critiquing gods. In the meantime, the opening:
When Father Joachim said he had learned to pour his soul into his music, Patrick didn't think the old chaplain meant it literally. Still, Joachim's voice carried the weight of one who believed such things were possible.
"Music is one of the most powerful gifts the Lord has given us," he told Patrick from his seat on the cracked dirt outside the medical tent. If not for the clerical collar and the violin on his lap, the dung-colored conformity of his fatigues would have blurred the distinctions between him and Patrick and the rest of the unit's soldiers.
Several of those soldiers ambled past, laughing, their arms slung around the waists of some local village girls. As Patrick stared after them, the gun strapped to his back felt as heavy as his shame. The other men had been with the unit for months, yet most acted as if they had never smelled the foxhole scents of blood, excrement and burning flesh. Patrick, barely with them an hour before yesterday's firefight, had covered his ears and wept when the first shells hit. And while tears streaked his face, as hot as the air, the stone-faced soldier beside him fired at the enemy line without hesitation.
"Music is one of the most powerful gifts the Lord has given us," he told Patrick from his seat on the cracked dirt outside the medical tent. If not for the clerical collar and the violin on his lap, the dung-colored conformity of his fatigues would have blurred the distinctions between him and Patrick and the rest of the unit's soldiers.
Several of those soldiers ambled past, laughing, their arms slung around the waists of some local village girls. As Patrick stared after them, the gun strapped to his back felt as heavy as his shame. The other men had been with the unit for months, yet most acted as if they had never smelled the foxhole scents of blood, excrement and burning flesh. Patrick, barely with them an hour before yesterday's firefight, had covered his ears and wept when the first shells hit. And while tears streaked his face, as hot as the air, the stone-faced soldier beside him fired at the enemy line without hesitation.
And now, back to the novel. *eyes huge stack of TNEO critiques with apprehension*
