Excepts and Stuff

Due to my renewed interest in Writing, I thougt it might be a good idea to review some of my old writing; and in some cases, (especially those that are written on 4-8 year old disintigrating notepaper) preserve that writing while also opening it up to review.

Tonight I have two excepts, one from each of the unfinished novels I started, (who knows, rewriting it may insire me to write more after all these years) This first of which is the opening page of an unnamed novel about a stuff through the eyes of a cat (give me a break, I was 15).

At dawn, Bountiful looks like a small town, but feels like a big city. The streets are wide and yet crowded almost to a standstill in front the church on Main Street. Busses move suddenly and just as suddenly grind to a halt, taking commuters on their way to work and dropping off those who just arrived, echoing the movements of a well oiled machine receiving raw materials, and in one swift motion, refining and spitting them out.

In fact, it would be a lie to say that most of the community wasn’t indeed a sort of gigantic mechanical process of mothers dropping off their kids, grocers and clerks inventorying and stocking their wares. 100,000 faceless people pass 100,000 more on their way home from the night shift. Women swarm in droves to the shopping complexes near by. All around town, car horns blare in the streets; orders are taken in restaurants and cafés; friends greet as they pass on the sidewalk. The sounds of a busy community ring like the bells of a thousand churches, each one vying for the attention of the next passerby.

But inevitably, the sun begins to rise and as the shadows cast by the mountains in the East recede across the valley, so to does the din of the hustling-bustling populace, unveiling the other half of the town. An even paced quietness takes over in the sunlight as each person settles into their routines and the machine like motions of the early hours give way to a seemingly living, breathing entity, a reflection of its residents. And if there was one resident Bountiful especially reflected, it was Chester the cat.