Rewriting

I've taken a tack that many authors don't when they've already released. I'm rewriting The Sea Witch completely and it will be a much a better story when I am done.

There were some things I hedged on that are being made plain in the rewrite. A couple of fellow authors took me aside and helped me to see the mistakes that I made. Here's a little bit of what I've come up with for the new version.

Divorced

His head throbbed as he woke up from another long night of drinking. Through bleary eyes he looked around the room and spotted the time. 7:12 AM appeared in glowing red letters on the alarm clock.

Minutes before, he had been peacefully dreaming in the king sized bed. Then he had noticed the papers on his night stand now that he was waking up.

Picking them up to see what they were, the words shouted at him. “Divorce Decree”, was impersonally printed in large letters across the top of the pages he was holding in his hands. As his anger once again began to consume him blindly, his hands began to shake. “You Bitch!” he swore.

Now, he looked around the room and could see everything Karen owned was missing. Then his anger subsided a moment as he finally remembered her driving away yesterday with a cast on her arm and all of her things in the van. He guessed he couldn’t blame her really. It was because of him her arm was broken and all of those times she had blackened eyes. He hated what he had become and he was sure she did too.

For months they had been fighting, although sometimes it would escalate into shouting and things would get thrown around. More than once, the police were called by the nosey neighbors who were concerned. Red and blue flashing lights on top of the cruisers became a quite familiar sight at their house.

Almost the entire relationship had been stormy for the 10 years that they had been together. At the beginning were most of the good moments, but those had become few and far between more recently. As a last resort, they had gone to marriage counseling but it didn’t work. Of course, you need to work at it to make it work. Timothy had given up trying to make it work for a while now.

There wasn’t much he could do now about her leaving, she was already gone. This time, it looked like it was for good.

Getting up from the bed he went over to the dresser. Looking at the angry reflection staring back, his rage began to increase again. How he hated that bastard!

Dropping the papers, he drew back and slammed his fist into the mirror. As it shattered, the pieces cascaded down. "I can't believe she did this to me!" Yet, down deep he didn't really fault her for leaving like she did. He would have left himself if the truth be told.

With a little of the rage expended, he came back to his senses. Seeing the remains of the mirror he regretted having broken it. Chuckling at the irony, he said, "I guess I've given myself seven more years of bad luck". In the partially empty room, the sounds reverberated.

Picking up the papers again he went to the bed and sat down a moment. He needed to think about what he was going to do now. Most of all, he needed another drink.