Writing Update: Filling in some holes
words
Location:
kitchen counter
Imbibement:
brown cow
They were in the midst of a game of hide and seek, but even were they not thus occupied, they would not acknowledge me. Those who were already out continued speaking when I came near. Thomas was telling the others about something he had seen in town. Even with no adults around we had to lean in close enough to hear him. Girls smoking. Boys too, but the boys were not so much news. We all nodded in satisfaction at the story, even though I caught only the last few words of it. I wanted add to the conversation what Greta had told me about Mrs Meuller, but it was a secret, and regardless of that, I wasn't convinced of its authenticity. So I let Thomas tell his story from the beginning again. The thought of Mrs Meuller smoking in the toilet in the church basement was unpleasant. But these girls were different.
"Why do people smoke?" I asked.
Everyone was silent for a bit.
"My dad says that people smoke instead of praying."
Ewa snorted, but I gave her a little punch in her shoulder and then waived my hand to Samuel like I wanted him to keep talking. "Why smoke instead of pray?"
"It gives you peace, he said. He said it's a false peace, but for a moment you feel like your problems just sort of float away."
Girls smoking instead of praying. Sinners. In my mind, they were all blondes, with crisp clothes and lips like strawberries, not like Claire - black hair with cobwebs and tangles and burs all down her skirt and her lips bruised blue like saskatoons. Claire, who drew close to us: she was it, and she had searched through all the usual spots where we hid. Jonas nodded toward the loading chute.
This is the first post of what I hope will be a regular feature in this space: an ongoing blog of my progress on my upcoming novel.
I've returned to the first part of the book to fill in any of the holes and get the narrative complete before moving on; a few missing details were preventing me from properly working on the second part of the book. Unfortunately, the reason that these passages were skipped on the first few passes over the section was because they're particularly tricky. So in returning to them, I'm finding the writing moves very slowly, but tonight I'm filling in a lot of those little holes, so it's a productive session.
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