Day 32 Writing Short Stories

Gold And Gems

Empires, tribes, cities, people, and the like are made into hives, having a mind that hates the other and loves us. There is a perpetual pressure of conflicts and wars. The kind of wars where armies march across borders, their steel weapons held high. In the middle of that, there is one. One that is beyond the hive, who smells the opportunity of power, of money, dreaming of states where they are free of the constraints of the other and us.

And he was just like that, the one. Not the kind of one that had made the wars roll over the lands and seize every mind and heart with fear and hatred. No, he was a peddler of goods, arranging things from person to person, seeking a release of the terror and the numbness that seeing a bloodied corpse did. He was good at peddling. It was his tongue that spoke fast, spoke eloquently, dreamed of things others needed time to catch up to. He could paint a picture of the heart’s desire for the kings and the like.

The war had made him rich, and the peddling and the constant need from the top brass kept him out of harm’s way.

He took a drag out of his cigarette and watched as the armies marched into the mountain pass to meet each other’s might. Here, up from the mountain, everything looked irrelevant, but that irrelevance made the cart his horse dragged full of goods with meaning. There were exotic mushrooms that released the mind. There were paintings, books, and urns that made the rich richer. But mostly there were alcohol and tobacco for the men, wearing their soles thin.

The clouds were kind to the men. They kept the harsh sun on leash that had been consuming the men from both sides. The silver armor of the elves still gleamed in the sunless valley. The dull iron of the men was hard to see, but its strength could be felt even up here in the mountains.

He was glad he would be the one to witness this rather than experience it. But more so, he was glad the skirmish wouldn’t be the end of things. Both sides had enough men to throw at each other for the war to stretch into a year or two.

He sat down and took a long drag from the cigarette. It tasted of mint and the exotic spices he had secured from the dwarfs that kept out of these things. Gold and gems had been exchanged.

—
I think I’m feeling a lot better. The dip was due to the fact that I didn’t get the writing project I wanted, and doubt crept in. It was not because of my talents, but because of the money allocation. Still, it felt bad to be rejected.

I got feedback from my editor. It was mostly good, and she loved the dystopian story. Only issue she raised was my tendency to tell rather than show, and now I’m trying to wrap my head around the matter, whether to fix the writing more modern or keep the tone of old sci-fi and dystopia books I love. I loved how Adrian Tchaikovsky explained in his interview that telling isn’t as bad as modern writing makes it out to be. That sometimes, telling is the right way to tell a story if it suits the situation. I think he uses it well in his stories. But I will take a poke around one more time and try to figure out if I can ease some of the telling parts of the book to make it more appealing.

But all in all, it was good to get her feedback and view the book through her lens. She even wrote that despite the telling aspect, she found the writing compelling, making it hard to put the book down—so high praises.

The raffle got me a lyrical war story with a rags-to-riches narrative made from the third-person point of view. The lyrical aspect still needs polishing, but otherwise I’m pleased with what I could write. Yes, this one was more tell than show, but I needed the tell to paint the picture at first. The action was left aside this time.

On a side note, I love watching the swallows swooping across the cloudy sky. Their flight paths are comforting and so precise and beautiful that they leave me in awe. How lovely it would be to fly?

Thank you for reading! Have a spacious day ❤

P.S. I’m not sure how I’m able to write for a couple of days now. My nephew is coming today with his friends, and they are staying with us until Saturday. They are sleeping in the room where my computer is.