Glad that's over...

     So... write a novel week went as well as it could. I did not get close to finishing. But here is a a little excerpt.

     I never thought that donkey meat would be a treat. But, after all these weeks of nothing but the thinnest meal mush and the occasional snake, the wild burro will taste better than steak. My husband, Manuel, was a few campfires over sharing a bottle of tequila with his best friend Paulo. Although tequila would do me some good right now, I have to keep stirring our little stew pot. If I burned this special meal I am sure to be sent away but I have nowhere to go. When I decided to follow my husband into the army, I turned my back on my village and my family. Now all I have left is the uncertain life of a soldadera.



     I have been traveling with the army for eight months. When I say eight months it sounds like such a short time, but in my heart I can hardly feel the person I was before. I used to live an unexceptional life like any other girl in the village. My mother was preparing me for marriage in all the traditional ways. As a child I was taught to obey. As a young girl I was taught to cook, sew and care for children properly. When womanhood neared I was taught to manage a household and a husband.


     My marriage has had no call for these skills. I needed to learn how to march for days on end and how to shoot as straight as the soldaderos. I needed strength and courage not motherly gentility. However, it is no use looking at what should have happened or who I should have been. There is just Manuel and I in the desert, sharing a pot of burro stew.

This week: Craft a day week. You'll see them soon.