Snippets from 100for100: Week Fourteen

 

     I have really good news...

     ...I think.

     It will depend on how it works out.

     I am rewriting Broken Clouds.

     So, if you have been following my blog, you know that I have been writing Broken Clouds in a nonchronological fashion, jumping around to write the scene that strikes my fancy.  You also know that I chopped my scenes up and spread them out on a table to sort them out recently (a great idea, by the way).  And you further know that I had a big, important backstory that I didn't know how to fit into the story.

     I pulled it apart and took a look at it and now I am putting it back together.  With the richness of the scenes I already wrote under my belt, I am starting at the beginning.  For me, there is so much to weave and so much to build upon from one scene to the next, and so much of it appears as I write and not before; I lose some of that when I don't write from front to back. 

     I wrote an outline that was a little richer than the ones I used to use for a research paper, and I made it all the way to the end.  And then I started writing from the beginning.

     As a result, I have more snippets to share.  Here they are:

 

 

     He was asleep.  His eyelashes were still wet from his tears.  But his face was peaceful.  In his dreams, he found rest…at least, when he was in my arms.  

 

**

     The bleak walls of the orphanage glided by me as I walked down the hall and up the stairs toward my own room.  I passed by a window and the sunlight hit my face, reminding me that this was not a midnight nightmare but as real and tangible as the little boy in my arms.  I shuddered.

**

“It’s a bad breach.  We should have moved her before she made a scene.”

**

Tory and I locked eyes for a moment. When she spoke, all of the bitterness and accusation was gone from her tone. “There’s nothing you can do, Kelsey,” she said.

**

 

It’s only for a little while,” she said.  “We are working on a really nice place for you, Kelsey.” 

 

**

     The problem with the system is that the real enemy is always something you can’t see.  It’s rules, regulations, red tape, protocol, the people at headquarters, secret powers that throw obstacles in your way.  And as hard as I kicked against it, I never felt that my blows connected with anything solid.  It was too far out of my reach.

 

**

He pulled me down until I was kneeling in front of him.  His sympathetic little face felt like a balm to my frustration.  Then he reached out and touched my dry cheeks.  “It’s okay to cry sometimes,” he said softly.

**

...Maybe they weren’t as dead as I thought.