Christmas and Rewrites

Spaghetti's cooking away, the toboggan hill is awaiting our arrival and all those incredibly loud rumbling noises have been identified as the train pulling in in The Polar Express, which is playing downstairs with the surround sound on. That scared the heck out of me, man. 

I want to thank everyone who so kindly sends us Christmas cards, even though we never send them. I do love receiving them, and have them all hung on a string above the pony wall in the living room. I tried to send Christmas cards once or twice but didn't make it through the project and it just became a huge dark cloud of guilt hovering over me. So I just said, NO! to doing Christmas cards. Man, I can't even seem to get the kids' school photos organised and sent out to friends and family. I suck at that sort of thing. [sigh] I love that everyone still sends me cards, though. That's very big of them.

Had a nice chat with Rob today, even though he's sick with the flu, poor fellow. Also talked to Colleen, which I do quite regularly lately, mostly because we're talking writing so much. I told her about my Stream of Consciousness writing I did t'other day. I wanted to find out what was truly going on in Kyer's mind once she gets taken by the enemy at the river. So I just wrote and wrote, occasionally checking back with the story to find out what happens next. I wrote in her dialogue, and her reactions to the things others said to her, but no narrative, just all Kyer's inner monologue. It was very interesting to discover some new things:

1) Kyer notes that Con is a coward. To finally pick her up but require eight men to do it, shows her that he's afraid of her. This knowledge keeps up her confidence for a lot longer than she might otherwise have lasted.

2) This also leads to a determination not to be broken. There are limits, of course, to how much she can take, and she's about to learn about those limits. However, during the trip to Ronav's headquarters she manages to keep her courage up.

3) Kyer compares her current situation to an event that occurred in the schoolyard where it took eight boys to beat her up. She still did them some damage AND walked home. They won the fight but they did not defeat her. Another source of courage for Kyer to draw on during this current little get-together with Con and Gyles and friends, whilst on their way to Ronav's headquarters.

And what a surprise awaits her when she gets there...

Now I need to figure out what nasty things to do to Janak. Derry, Jesqellan, Janak and Phennil are attacked by an ogre at the same time that Con & Co. are picking up Kyer, and I need Janak to incur some damage. Something that prevents them from following after Kyer, and something that royally ticks him off, so he can blame it on Kyer.

This has been the trickiest rewrite I've ever tackled. Don't know why. But I'm finally making headway. Making my characters suffer... what larks. Merry Christmas, guys.