WIp Challenge: Day 24, Saturday

[enemytosleep]

This is a bit early as I'll be on the road nearly all day and I'd rather it be open for everyone all day than have it go up after the Europeans have gone to bed!



How many new words did you write today? Did you reach your goal? Were you editing instead? Researching? Or was today a day of rest?

...and today's discussion topic:


Snippet day! You've worked hard all week, so let's see what you've been drafting. Please feel free to share a some of what you've been working on, ask for a beta/critique, offer to read something over, or just bask in the glory of your weekly word total!

Comments

[crowdog66]

I'm still having my first cup of coffee and getting my mind in gear for the day, so no word count yet -- but I hope to write at least a few hundred words once I've woken up a bit more, and if I do I'll post a comment under this comment to indicate as much. :)

This week's word count was around 6000 words, most of them on a multi-chapter story, "Impulse", which is still in progress and which I will be working on today. But I also wrote a stand-alone short story, "Ironwood", which I'll take my snippet from, thus:

***********************************************************

He'd lied, of course, when he told Doctor Bashir that he was perfectly satisfied with the way things had turned out vis a vis his implant. Garak made it his business to twist the truth, which meant that he had to know exactly where it stood at all times — and he was consequently aware that in fact he was miserably unhappy in most respects. He was still in exile, with no significant hope of ever getting far enough back into Tain's good graces to return to the homeworld he desperately pined for; he was still in withdrawal from the implant's stimulation, which left him feeling like the marrow of his bones had been replaced with a slurry of broken glass and lead; and he was still trapped in an environment that was too cold, too bright, and occupied to a large degree by a race full of hostile aliens who would happily see him shoved out the nearest airlock.

In short, he was isolated and sick and under siege, and although he was able to put forward a cheerful smile and a line of witty patter he couldn't deny the underlying reality: that Cardassians were happiest in a crowd of their own kind, and he hadn't seen a properly scaled face regard him with friendliness in many years. The weight of all those empty days weighed on him when he lay in his bed at night, crushing him so that he could barely breathe…

… but trained operatives of the Order, even those in disgrace, were not weak reeds to snap under the storms of unhappy fate. Garak had always been an exemplary model of the type: he was an ironwood, capable of surviving the most relentless pressures, the heat of savage suns and the ache of prolonged droughts. The ground beneath him was sandy and shallow, but he'd sent roots down as deep as he could and he had endured. And he would continue to endure for the sake of loyalty and duty, even though his motherland had cast him into a cold and distant prison and, it seemed, thrown away the key.

[roane]

This is so sad and lovely.

[crowdog66]

Thank you! :)

And I wrote another 2125-word chapter of "Impulse" as well, so it's been a pretty good day thus far.