detritus

Thursdays are my “JUST WRITE: No exceptions” days (I find it helpful to subtitle my personal commitments; it gives more weight to them), and this one has been pretty successful. I completed Chapter-izing my novel, which was a really necessary step in editing since I’m too enamored with my own witty language to be able to cut any single sentences from my novel. Viewed as a chapter list with a few bullet points under each chapter will help me to rearrange elements, spot plot holes, and eliminate superfluous characters (sorry, Robert…).

Direction(from Hasbro)

The pale polished wood grain made the pitch black form of the letters stark and plain, eloquent in their directness. Somehow they’d ended up in order, face down, on their tumble out of the Scrabble sack, and as she racked them she slowed with each reveal, wondering if she was hallucinating as she placed each letter next to its predecessor.

She’d been silently and patiently awaiting a sign ever since the wedding day–an indication, a direction, an arrow pointing her to the path of freedom. She’d never wanted to get married, but after 10 happy years together, his persistence had overcome her will. The rings were a bridge to a world she had never wanted to visit.

For months, she sought an escape, an out, anything to get her out of the prison she’d been confined to by her own altared words. The truth would hurt him too much, and every time she gathered the nerve, the words stayed choked in her throat. But as the seventh tile hit the rack and she sat staring at the lifeline that Fate had thrown her in this obvious yet unsuspected way, she felt at ease for the first time in a year.

Of course, she thought as she played the word onto the sterile plastic board, it’s so simple: A-R-S-E-N-I-C.