The first surprise in my rewriting was seeing that the first draft was actually written in 2004. The first rewrite attempt was made in 2006. My how time flies.
The second surprise was the writing style. I remembered I wrote it in sort of a author-as-narrator tone, but it seems a super-charged, almost like a circus barker telling the story. I recall that some people said they really liked the voice, and others said they didn't.
Maybe I should tone it down? I hesitate to mess with it much, because there's a lot if wordplay and humor in it that I don't think I could match now.
I'm not sure I can write funny at all any more....did I lose my funny bone over the last few years, or am I just in a bad mood?
Anyway, I only tweaked a sentence here and there and added a prologue that introduces the main character, Miggin, early...since she doesn't appear in the book till Chapter 5 or something.
Maybe I'll post it here...preview time!
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The girl stood in the bottom of the frozen pit. She was small but sturdy. Still, she looked as if she weighed less than the hammer she was wielding. All the long winter she had worked, chipping the grave from the solid, frozen mountainside. Now it was almost ready.
Pushing a strand of mouse-colored hair from her eyes, Miggin laid the chisel against the wall of the grave one last time. She raised the hammer and struck. The familiar sound of the hammer striking the chisel rang through the air, but instead of the ‘ker-chunk’ of the chisel chipping away the frozen ground, the chisel said, ‘splorch!’
Miggin looked up. The spring sun was shining down into the grave, thawing the earth at last. Life was completely unfair.
She climbed out, hauling the hammer and chisel up after her. At the foot of the grave, her grandmother sat on a boulder, leaning against a tree and smiling serenely. Miggin’s grandmother had worn that smile since the bitter end of November, when she had sat down for a little rest and never moved again.
Now, when they were about to be parted forever, tears seemed to stream down the old woman’s face. Miggin know it was only the ice melting, but her own tears flowed in response. “Goodbye, Grandmother,” she whispered softly, and kissed the frosty old cheek.
The slight pressure was enough to break the remaining ice holding the old woman to the tree, and the body dove headfirst into the grave.
Miggin stood silently for a few minutes, trying to think of something to say. Then she picked up a shovel and started putting the half-frozen chunks of earth back into the hole, singing the lullaby her Grandmother had taught her as she worked. It seemed the best farewell.
The firewood was almost gone, and little food remained in the cottage. Soon Miggin would have to forage for herself.
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There's a couple more paragraphs briefly introducing Druzilla, Miggin's foil, but I may cut those as unecessary. Druzilla appears in Chapter 2.
