One sentence. Sunday 04th May 2025.

Today’s sentence:

“They must become more flotsam in a river of souls, moving inexorably toward an uncertain future.“

Inspiration and Observation:
This is a line from my current work in progress. This is my first novel. I’m just doing a final round of checking chapters before sending them to a very kind friend of mine, who is also a truly talented author, for an Alpha Read. This is a vital part of ensuring that one’s draft is in decent shape. A good Alpha Reader will tell you straight up where you’re going right and wrong. It can also be a bruising encounter; this thing that you have poured countless hours into is being read by another person, and they’re going to tell you the truth. Warts and all. That is the key point of the Alpha Reader; they have to be the sort of person who will tell you exactly what you need to hear. On the other hand, you have to make sure you’re willing to listen. You’ve trusted them enough to read your novel, then trust them a bit more and take their advice. To my own Alpha Reader, Damien, I cannot thank you enough. When this thing is finally in print, I’ll write a proper post to punish you for your good deed.

The sentence lodged for later use as:
I wish I could say where this came from. It’s definitely got its roots in the earliest drafts. It’s changed so much over the process, it’s hard to tell when it landed and stuck. The novel is itself rooted in my experiences during my service in the Mediterranean. As a post a few days ago mentioned, in two weeks, it’ll be ten years since we first set sail on a humanitarian mission to the waters of Libya, during the middle of the migrant crisis.

It evolved as:

• This is another where I’d be here until Christmas, dragging lines from drafts, to show the evolution. I’ll see what I can find for below.
• “Just more flotsam in a river of souls moving inexorably towards uncertainty.”
• “In this river of souls, they’d just be more flotsam, floating inexorably toward uncertainty”
• “In this river of souls, they’d just be more flotsam, floating inexorably toward an uncertain future.”

Thank you https://unsplash.com/@lisastockton for the image.