Joely Sue Burkhart

I’m pleased to say I finished the first draft of my short story last night.  Well of Sky came in at 6,180 words, a little shorter than I expected, but perfect for the antho guidelines (< 9K).  I'm getting ready to read it through tonight, tweak it a little, and then I'm switching back to Beautiful Death ECE revisions.  I have time to come back in a week or so and make another pass once my readers have had a chance to make comments. 

I'm pleased, very pleased, with how it turned out, although there's some word choices I probably need to think through.  For instance, instead of tree, I used ceiba, a very specific tree in Maya mythology (Raised-Up Sky or the World Tree).  That makes sense to me.  Then I asked myself whether I should leave “ten years” alone or use their word for year, tun.  In the past, I would have reveled in all the strange words and phrases, proud to demonstrate  my research.  *wg*  Oh, grasshopper.  Sigh.

Now, I hesitate.  The Maya knew what “year” meant; they could literally count thousands of years into the future.  I need balance, and what serves the character and her story.  It’s in first person, another oddity for me, and in first person, she’s not going to do a lot of “explaining.”  So I left it as “year” for now.  Cause where do you draw the line.  If I do tun then I’d better use their word for ten.  Oh, but that’s two long dashes, not a word….  And none of their written language was words anyway, it was pictures.  Duh.  I’m surely not telling a story in glyphs like this one, although it’s beautiful. 

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