Being a perfectionist really can kill the first draft. I'm trying to teach myself not to be. I sent another beginning to an agent and he was really nice about my writing, but had a note of caution: over-writing.
In other news, I'm seeing a hypnotherapist. Not romantically.
--
I.
The bear nosed through the
forest, his boxy shoulders making light work of the subshrubs. He didn’t know
exactly where to find Salena Aro, just that he’d know her when he saw her.
Humans.
He’d seen them at a distance, always turning his back to lumber away. With their
shouts, nail hammering, tree chopping and gun-banging, they were a grating
bunch. Hyper-coloured in bright plaid shirts and hyperactive too. Busy-busy
with their own inventions and possessions rather than with nature.
Most
self-obsessed, thought the bear, who liked alone time more than most and spent
much of it meditating.
The soil
smelt spongy and pungent after the rain, so the bear breathed deeply, able to
pick out the snail shell from the berries, moss and mulch. He lingered on the
sizzling sauna sausages from a feast last night, still present on the breeze
and carried a mile or so across the lake. A rotting mink carcass and a party of
carrion revellers gave him cause to exhale. In death, the mustelidae are a
putrid family. His favourite animals in life, otters could really pong once
maggots came and he wouldn’t wish a stinky weasel up the snout of his worst
enemy, if bears had enemies, which they don’t.
The bear
stopped and sniffed in a different way. A focused, narrow way that allowed him
to reel in a ribbon of familiarity. Wolf? His friend Wolf had crossed this
path, some months back. Dear Wolf, whose grey fur emitted a pleasant cologne of
sheep wool and lingonberry, and whose gruff voice could turn a howl into a
requiem. Wolf was the first of the pair to get a mission from Mother Sky, and
he was asked: Are you brave, Wolf? And Wolf said, of course I am.
Bears and
wolves must serve, so when Mother Sky tasked the bear to make a deal with
Salena Aro, he knew he must put aside his distaste for humans and make his appeal
with the kind of celestial eloquence only a bear has words for.
