Day 4: 500 words

Extract:

It was just before midday the next day when the rider returned, the party of Icel in tow – about thirty men in all, all mounted and armed. Hemming and Broder watched them snake up the road from the south, standing on the wooden walls around Anga’s Hall. Angaborg lay to their right, on the other side of Anga’s River. The village of six hundred was at its busiest; smoke rose from the hovels as women tanned animal hides, and the air was filled with the methodic crunching of many querns, as oats and grain were milled into flour and porridge. Stretching out down the riverbanks to the north and south, the yellow fields of oats and wheat were full of men with iron sickles. Children played games in the dirt of the market square, where farmer met crafter, and they exchanged food for tools. Idlers watched the work while they talked. Hemming could see two of his father’s warriors in the square, but he couldn’t tell which two. They had their hands on their sword hilts, but they mingled casually and talked with the merchants, and didn’t wear any armour.

So today I didn't do much writing of the actual story, but I have done writing of another sort.

I've written out a plan for the next few chapters, mainly so I know what direction I should be heading in whenever I start a new scene or section.

I did this because the writing I produced over the last few days, while helping me to discover the characters and the way they act and interact, has drifted vaguely from the aim I have in mind, and has become sort of lacking in direction.

So today I also went back through the last 2,000 words or so editing and refining (I know, I know, the golden rule!)

But the platinum rule is to complete a coherent novel... so that overrides it. :P

Tomorrow will (hopefully) be a day of many words, now that things are pointing in the right direction again.

Fingers crossed!