Writer's Therapy #2 - Word by painful bloody word

I haven't posted for a few days. I've been reading and curating, yes, but not posting. The all important question is, have I been writing? Funnily enough (and I thank Steemit and the wonderful community for this - I mean it) I have been. I haven't written as much as I have in the last month for years. Actual years, not just hyperbolic point-making years, but real, honest-to-goodness where-did-the-time-go years. I've been writing every day...just not posting. So what have I been writing? Thanks for asking! The next chapter of the novel I've been posted here in Steemit. But (and this is a huge, continent sized but), it has not been coming easy. Today was an especially hard day.

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I may have been feeling a bit stabby today, I admit it. On top of my piss-poor attitude there was the fact that the the words just weren't coming. That said, in the end I did manage to write about 1000 of them, but every single word of them was hard-fought, painful and confidence draining.

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So I'm posting this for me and for any other writers out there who happen upon this post. These things don't write themselves. We write them. And if it has to happen word by bloody word, so be it.

Anyway, here's another bit of fantasy I wrote (not today) that will never otherwise see the light of day:

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“Lieutenant!” the watch officer called.

Lieutenant Yunlo Fieba hurried over to take a look. The comet was higher in the sky and seemed to have grown in size. A flaming ball of green and red, its tail streaked out behind it like the finger of Duron himself, lighting up the clouds so that their ruddy boiling rims took on an evil countenance. It lit the sky from west to east, as if Duron had decided to show them himself where their enemy lay. It pointed at the heart of Minos Mecar.

Around them the earth reflected the sky. Sparsely vegetated flats turned red under that fiery star; night turned to a demonic half-light.

“What do you think, Sir?” the watchman asked.

Fieba didn’t answer for a moment. Instead he stared at the crowded shape of the Damkins, the low gray and yellow hills that marked the border between Dalriad and the westernmost reaches of Minos Mecar. On their far side, the enemy had made its encampment. One of Minos Mecar’s armies was gathering--possibly the first of many.

“Is it an omen, sir?” the watchman asked.

Fieba nodded his head. “Aye, if ever I’ve seen one.” He turned back to the watch officer. “Carry on. Nothing will happen this night, but wake me if need be.”

"Aye, Sir.”

It was an omen, all right. But of what? Did they really need any more warning than the reports of hundreds of Minos Mecar’s Panthers moving across the western lowlands towards the Damkins? The real omen was that they were here now, manning this watchtower in the middle of a field of bivouacked troops.

Fieba returned to his bunk, refusing to look at the sky even one more time. What troubled him had nothing to do with the movement of celestial bodies. He could smell the sour stench of war, like stale gangrene, and comet or no comet, war and death were nearer at hand than General Krench was telling. Fieba was often wrong about many things, but he always knew when death was approaching, and when he gambled he made sure to win.

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Zombie out. Thanks for reading!