THE HALL OF TEENSY TEASERS

I love working a nine day fortnight.

After a few days away from the work, I managed to sit down today and bash out 2300 words on The Hall of Small Questions, bringing the story to just over 7000 words in total. It’s the first of a number of milestones for me: once a work crosses 5000 words, I know it’s going to be something. It may not end up a novel, but the story has gelled enough that I know it will eventually become a complete story, at whatever natural length is right for the narrative. And so it is proving in this case: the narrative is beginning to peek out from behind the scene setting; characters have placed themselves into the setting and are beginning to direct the course of the plot; and my protagonist is starting to take independent action. Th Hall of Small Questions will be completed, in time, I now know that for sure.

So, to mark this crossing of my own personal Rubicon, here’s a little paragraph from today’s writing, to whet both your appetite and mine:

“We are the product of our environment, Wacian.” Broga tapped my forehead gently with his finger. “The world we inhabit is an extension of ourselves. If the world outside that window looks beautiful it is only because the people who inhabit it look beautiful. But we do not concern ourselves with elegant robes and powdered skin. We peel these things away and reveal the corruption below. We cannot immerse ourselves in that beautiful environment, not unless we wish to risk losing sight of the corruption underneath its skin.”

“Truth must remain pure,” Eadward had been waiting for me. Now he stepped forward out of the nearby shadows. “And we must remain pure in order to search it out.”