Have a WIP, an EIP, an MS, or a published work you want to share on your blog, eight to ten sentences at a time?
Want to sample other people’s WIPs, EIPs, MSs, or published works, eight to ten sentences at a time?
Be a Weekend Writing Warrior!
________
Or if you’re a fellow Facebook addict (we can quit any time we want to, right?),
why not check out the offerings of the Snippet Sunday gang?
________
I’m going to share a bit from chapter fifteen because that’s the chapter I’m currently bashing into shape. I recently added the description below to the scene that originally started with the last three lines.
My GPS directed me to Plainview Heights, one of the bedroom communities that had sprung up to accommodate Talbot’s upper middle management. It was a nice little neighborhood, maybe a little less lived in than the one I’d grown up in, a mix of single houses and townhomes, with green lawns and clean sidewalks.
It looked cozy and friendly in a Your Friendly Neighborhood Association Is Watching You way.
The house was brick with an arched, solid-looking wooden door banded with dull iron that I was betting wasn’t entirely decorative. One of the small glass windows at the top displayed three vinyl cling badges. One was for the Talbot City Police Association and another stated that the premises had a security system. The other was the symbol of the Regional Council.
I rang the doorbell and waited.
A short, round, brunette woman wearing comfortable jeans and an oversized State College sweatshirt opened the door. “Hello, Tom,” she said.
__________________
I always had Regional Werecouncil symbols on doors and menus and things from the first draft of this, but the image up there is a direct result of having a bit too much free time a few weeks ago, plus handy access to a book on symbolism and MS Paint.
The general shape is based on the alchemy symbol for transformation, while the yin yang is a symbol that continually shifts in balance between two states, while each still keeps aspects of the other—those would be the “tadpole eyes”, which were a stone pain to get lined up, believe me.
An hour with Google and a Latin phrase book—a LOT of free time—netted the motto, which means, “Nature Does Nothing in Vain.” There were several other possibilities for an organization that functions like a shapeshifter U.N.* and it’s possible I’ll change it in a later draft, once they get their act together I figure out exactly how they operate.
It has crossed my mind that I could have used all that free time to, you know, work on the book, instead of cursing that little paint bucket icon thingie and giggling over bastardized Latin (Te audire no possum; musa sapientum fixa est in aure!).
Meh.
_____________________________
*Defendit numerus (Safety in Numbers), Ex Aequo (According to what is equal), and Pacta sunt servanda (Agreements must be kept) were the top contenders. I also liked Commutabo Ergo Sum (I change, therefore I am) and Auribus teneo lupum (Holding a wolf by the ears), but by then I was getting a little slap happy.
Earful of Cider 