This morning I woke up a little early and wrote for a bit.
The room in which Asnil played the Prince of Alba had been used for many things. The brothel had originally been a single story structure. An addition had later been built that was effectively a tiny separate dwelling on the roof with part of it overhanging the corner of the street on which the main building stood. Once Ursa had lived in it before obtaining his own house elsewhere in the city. After that he had used it for storage. Then for a while he had rented it out, and most recently it had become his office and a place to sleep until Asnil's arrival. Now it was The Prince of Alba's. Ursa had moved his office back into the small room downstairs with the safe, though he still sometimes slept upstairs with Asnil.
Ursa was a bear of a man, as befitted his name. He had lost an eye and chose not to cover this disfiguration, preferring to use it to intimidate those with whom he was forced to deal. The prostitutes were all terrified of him. He shaved his head on which there was always a red woolen cap but kept a carefully manicured beard. He had an aversion to white, never wearing any clothing of that color. His teeth were brown from smoking kief and general neglect, and even his one good eye was usually so bloodshot that there was no white in it.
In the neighborhood where the brothel was located there were phalluses on every street corner made of stone or bronze or painted on walls and thought to ward off evil. They might as well have been meant to ward off women -- respectable ones; in Massalia it was a crime for a woman to drink wine or to visit a house of ill repute (unless of course she was a prostitute). But that did not mean that women were not attracted to the forms of degradation that brothels like Ursa's had to offer, some who were rich enough to flaunt the mores of the society that they felt was beneath them and to believe that they could evade with their wealth the penalty of being caught, which was death; or perhaps, jaded by that same wealth, in search of a thrill that money alone could not buy.
The first two paragraphs strike me as okay. The third one not so good. I think I'll have to rewrite it. I'm working on the second draft of a 1,000 page first draft and I've gotten to around page 215 or so but the first draft around in here took a dive and I'm rewriting from scratch. It's difficult, but it's actually fun. I think the first draft is the most fun because it's the most difficult, and you risk the most, and for me at least you get totally freaked out, which at my age, I guess, is fun.
Anyway, I've been swimming around trying to link things up as I've been writing everything out of order, and it's like removing an organ and transplanting in another one or something. Everything definitely has to fit right.
The room in which Asnil played the Prince of Alba had been used for many things. The brothel had originally been a single story structure. An addition had later been built that was effectively a tiny separate dwelling on the roof with part of it overhanging the corner of the street on which the main building stood. Once Ursa had lived in it before obtaining his own house elsewhere in the city. After that he had used it for storage. Then for a while he had rented it out, and most recently it had become his office and a place to sleep until Asnil's arrival. Now it was The Prince of Alba's. Ursa had moved his office back into the small room downstairs with the safe, though he still sometimes slept upstairs with Asnil.
Ursa was a bear of a man, as befitted his name. He had lost an eye and chose not to cover this disfiguration, preferring to use it to intimidate those with whom he was forced to deal. The prostitutes were all terrified of him. He shaved his head on which there was always a red woolen cap but kept a carefully manicured beard. He had an aversion to white, never wearing any clothing of that color. His teeth were brown from smoking kief and general neglect, and even his one good eye was usually so bloodshot that there was no white in it.
In the neighborhood where the brothel was located there were phalluses on every street corner made of stone or bronze or painted on walls and thought to ward off evil. They might as well have been meant to ward off women -- respectable ones; in Massalia it was a crime for a woman to drink wine or to visit a house of ill repute (unless of course she was a prostitute). But that did not mean that women were not attracted to the forms of degradation that brothels like Ursa's had to offer, some who were rich enough to flaunt the mores of the society that they felt was beneath them and to believe that they could evade with their wealth the penalty of being caught, which was death; or perhaps, jaded by that same wealth, in search of a thrill that money alone could not buy.
The first two paragraphs strike me as okay. The third one not so good. I think I'll have to rewrite it. I'm working on the second draft of a 1,000 page first draft and I've gotten to around page 215 or so but the first draft around in here took a dive and I'm rewriting from scratch. It's difficult, but it's actually fun. I think the first draft is the most fun because it's the most difficult, and you risk the most, and for me at least you get totally freaked out, which at my age, I guess, is fun.
Anyway, I've been swimming around trying to link things up as I've been writing everything out of order, and it's like removing an organ and transplanting in another one or something. Everything definitely has to fit right.