Where We’ve Been…

My finished MS, Saw It Coming, has been through four major revisions since December. I figure it’s got at least two more before it’s ready (is it ever ready?) to send to agent. And thanks to the “You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby!” Blogfest on The Writer’s Hole, you can see version two versus the semi-current version.

Here we go:

Sam was sweating.
He stood, took off his soggy shirt and threw it across the room. He couldn’t see where it landed, but from the audible splat assumed it hit the cinderblock wall. This is like having a monsoon pour out of your body. I might as well be running a marathon through the Amazon. He sat on the edge of his bed and waited for the next phase.
The vomit stayed in his stomach, but he wished it would come up. Nauseous and dizzy, he lay among his sodden sheets hoping to draw warmth from the damp covering. Maybe I have malaria, maybe I have cancer, maybe I have Parkinson’s.
Sleep usually overtook him before the effects of the nightmare wore off. But he always awoke two certainties. First, his blankets were tornado twisted around his long limbs like he’d been thrashing in his sleep. And second, for the rest of the day he’d be haunted by a stranger’s face.

I spend another page describing his ailments and nightmare before the action really happens. Each time I rewrote, this section it got shorter and we got to the cool stuff faster…which I think is good. Right?

Here’s the most current version:

Sam collapsed onto the cot. Its aluminum frame shifted under his weight threatening to dump him onto the concrete floor. He was too sick to care.
The Thai soup he’d eaten for dinner was spicy going down, and molten lava coming back up. His nasal passages burned with the acrid scent of regurgitated shrimp and red peppers.
Never again, he vowed. Bread. It doesn’t burn as much coming up. I’m only going to eat bread until these nightmares stop.
Gulping, Sam prayed that if there was any food left in his stomach it would stay put.
He hadn’t been asleep for long. The cinderblock room was still dark when the security agent burst through the door.

I had to re-type all of this. For some reason, my computer won’t let me cut and past text into my blog. Irritating. Sorry if there are any typos.

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