I've been working on my current novel for round-about five years now. Most of that was world-building, to be fair, and for the first two years of that, I was finishing my undergrad degree, which was a double-major in Creative Writing and Theatre Arts (both majors that take a lot of extra out-of-class time for every single in-class project assigned).
However, when I sat down after graduation (in Spring of 2020, during the height of the pandemic shut-downs), I found no words. In fact, I got tired every time I tried to write the story of this world and these characters I'd grown to know so well.
Now, I'm in my second semester of graduate school, and somehow this first chapter is slowly starting to come to me, about a paragraph at a time. This is not my typical writing style, mind you. This is something I decided to just let myself free-write, just to have some fun, and it's working to pull coherent ideas out of me just out of the nowhere sinkhole that's been this story in my mind for the past several years.
It's not much, but I wanted to share the first three paragraphs that came to me because I'm excited about them and, actually, kind of proud of them, surprisingly (because I usually think everything I write is trash xD).
I don't expect it, but I also wouldn't say 'no' to some feedback, either. Especially if it's of the constructive variety. ^-^
The wind howled through the night outside the tavern window — a restless wail of dissatisfaction that seemed to reach from the very souls of every living creature to the stars overhead, their original home, beseeching those far away lights for what, they cannot put conscious words to. It galed through the cobblestone streets whipping up dust from between the stones that otherwise lay hidden — a semblance of a shiny spotlessness that hid the mold eating away at the streets beneath each stone — it burst through alleyways in fits and gasps sending chills down backs of the hidden bodies trying to snatch a few hours of peace from the controlled fists of the powerful trying to mask their greed in normality and stability; it rattled the windows and shook the outer walls of every home, though some certainly withstood the onslaught better than others; it carried scents of salt and brine from the nearby waters bursting with monsters ready to devour any and all wayward travelers who dared disturb their vast tempestuous tidal territory.
Xan, for his part, was just grateful the wind hadn’t brought downpours of icy rain that often accompanied it during the season. He loathed being wet — the way clothing prickled his skin, becoming like myriad minuscule needles all running somehow against the grain of his flesh with every movement — and the icy nature of the season’s wind only compounded the constant prickling discomfort further, forcing him into a state of miserable statuesque solitude of which only drink or questionable smoky concoctions could soften the jagged edges, offering the most minute relief short of stripping stark naked and crawling into a basin full of scalding water — always assuming he could afford the coin required for such a superlative luxury. It was a rare and noteworthy treat to immerse himself in water, let alone of the sort that was still clean and hot. Almost, he wouldn’t know what to do with himself. He might even drown in all of that liquid relaxation, inhaling the grime he’d just scrubbed from his skin so that it filled his lungs, never to be parted from him again.
But nights like these, for Xan, were made of pints and pints of the cheapest ale coin could procure, and he threw himself headfirst into the bottoms of those tankards as though the liquid contained what remained of his life and he needed to inhale all of it immediately lest he lose what precious few years he likely had left to him. So, as was usual on stormy nights, like these, Xan hunched over the darkest corner of the sleaziest pub, curled around his nearly empty mug of unhealthy piss-colored grotty ale, trying not to think about the journey back to his hovel when the place closed its taps and doors for the impending arrival of the accursed morning sun.
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