Another eighteen hundred words on Escaping Canaan means that Magic Meter looks like this now:
Still far from impressive, I know. On the other hand, I doubled my output from the previous week, and I have an actual percentage to show for it. I’m on the board!
Hey, it counts, all right? Shut up.
In truth, my schedule hasn’t settled down yet, and I’ve been suffering from a crisis of confidence. The latter is nothing new, but it’s unusual for it to hit so early. Things are looking up, though. As I read through the notes I made months ago, I began to recapture some of the frisson that made me believe I had a novel in there somewhere. These characters have some hidden depths that I’m excited to explore. Where it’s all gonna lead, I’m not entirely sure (I never am), but I’m more confident now than I was at this time last week that it will be someplace worth visiting.
Your snippet:
Around him, other agents were approaching other passengers, extending similar greetings. A row of three conduits filled most of the space, a chamber beneath Union Station. The D.C. facility in the timeline he’d just departed dwarfed this one–so large that from one end, he couldn’t see all the way across. It boasted at least twenty conduits, and the volume of travelers made the place crowded and boisterous.
The Canaan facility, by contrast, was quiet and deserted, except for the debarking passengers . . . and a knot of people near the elevators, bearing signs with messages like Close the Conduits, Sinners Go Home, and most memorably, You Are Not Welcome Here. The woman holding that one locked gazes with Eric for a moment. She could have been his mother’s age. He might even have considered her pretty had her expression not been so stony and grim. Her lower lip curled with revulsion; she stared at him, unblinking, until he turned away.
No updates for Write Club.
Holiday weekend, complete with travel, coming up. More schedule disruption. Let’s see how I do with it.
Till next time . . .
