Worked on the Barbados story tonight, for less than an hour. It's not exciting me, but I'd like to focus on a single story rather than my usual fragments that go nowhere. I'm not satisfied with a bit of it, but here's an excerpt from it.
At least I can say I am regularly updating my blog if nothing else. Once I finish this story, back to revising. Why does revising feel like cheating? Because it's easier for me once I have the raw material? Does the raw material need to be of a certain caliber for the revision process to make it better? A diamond in the rough? Or, is it okay for the raw material to be next to crap and the revision process used to craft it into the writer's vision? Spinning straw into gold?
Oh, yes, that excerpt I promised.
On the fourth day, the winds must have turned. My father woke everyone up early. I heard him come in and walk towards the window, open the drapes a crack, enough to make the room bright. Lorrie stirred and groaned and rolled over to face the dark side of the room. I didn’t move, just blinked at my father. He was already showered and dressed, wearing the white sneakers he had bought for this trip.
“Today,” he said as if he wasn’t talking to two sleeping girls, “we fish.” Since we arrived, the local fisherman had been telling my father that the winds were too strong to go out, even though the sky was a solid blue and the ocean beat the shore gently, like it was nibbling on the sand. He’d walk out onto the dock early in the morning, and every day the fisherman promised him the same thing. “Tomorrow,” they’d tell him, which he had a hard time believing because they smiled at him the same way the desk clerks, waiters, bartenders and maids did, and the wind was steady but not strong.
He pulled coffee cups from a cardboard tray and laid them out on the little round table in front of the sliding doors. Then he pulled bagels from a large brown sack, one after the other. I had no idea where he could have found bagels on this island, but it wasn’t worth asking.
Lorrie sat up in bed, letting her hair fall in her face, her eyes only partially open. We were the same age, but she was more put together than me. She rode horses and wore silver rings that she laid out by the bathroom sink at night. She talked a lot about a boy she dated last summer, but she told a lot of stories, and I never knew which ones to believe.
“How’s that for a bagel?” he said, squeezing each one as he pulled it out of the bag. He tossed one to Lorrie who was sitting up in bed and grimacing. The sunburn had not faded from his cheeks.
“Ick,” she said and ducked under the covers so the bagel rolled off her bed and under mine.
“Where’s Gail?” I asked, still not sitting up but mindful of a bagel being thrown my way. Lorrie looked at me from under the covers, twisted her face and rolled her eyes, which meant that she wanted my father out of the room as soon as possible.
