Happy Wednesday! I’m volunteering at music, arts, and drama camp every morning this week, so I may be slow on reading the other snippets. But I’m here, still plugging away at Drumbeat.
The writing isn’t going as fast as some projects have. I keep getting stuck and hung up on certain details. Part of me knows it will all come together eventually. The rest of me wants to kick the manuscript in the teeth real hard. I think I’ve finally gotten the first half to a relatively polished state, and the second half is in various stages of rewriting and adding stuff.
Today’s snippet is about Cian. He’s having dinner with his family—father, stepmother, and three younger half-sisters. Cadence, the 13-year-old, is in his dance class. Just as a reminder, Cian is deaf but wears hearing aids. Cadence liberally switches between speech and ASL. Here, they’re discussing one of the other dance students being rude to Cadence. The first line is hers.
WIPmath: 8/16/2017 = 1 + 6 = 7 paragraphs, mostly dialog.
She calls me names.
Cian’s head snapped up. Angrily, he signed, In my class?
At school. She shaped a “y” with her fingers and made a motion. Whale. She signs it so the teachers won’t know.
Do you want me to— He stopped at the force of Cadence’s no.
Out loud, Cadence said, “She thinks you won’t compete because you know I’m too fat to make us look good.”
Cian chewed his bite angrily. He didn’t compete because he didn’t like the idea of media hounding his deaf and disabled students and making them into inspirations for the general public. It had nothing to do with Cadence or any other specific dancer. “You know that’s not true, right?”
“Of course I do!” Cadence snapped. She rolled her eyes and relaxed her shoulders. “I don’t care what names she calls me. I’m okay with me, and she can stick it up her—” She glanced at their father’s raised eyebrows. “—nose. Anyway, I’m just mad that she’s talking about you.”
Like what you read? Be sure to check out the other entries and add your own. Just post a bit of your WIP, connect it to the date, and link up with us. Many thanks to Emily Wrayburn for giving us this space. Happy reading and writing!
