Update from Nano...

Hey all! I've got to say that I was right, somewhat. I feared that trying to rewrite a story instead of writing on a new idea might be harder just because there is a previous version. This weekend I kept trying to write on the original idea and lets just say, it didn't work so well. Saturday was a very frustrating day. Yesterday, however, was a good day and I came up with some very fresh ideas on how to use the characters I already had in a slightly different place in thier lives. Although I only have a little over 2500 words written (and realistically should have just about 10,000) I feel I am in a better mindset to forge forward. The hardest part is to keep from going back and editing as I get new ideas for the story, but that comes later, in december :)

Alright I will quit yaking now and give you all what you so deeply desire. Heres an excerpt from the first chapter of 'Culture: a working title'. I hope you enjoy this part as much as I enjoyed imagining Sarient's central train transfer station.

John, the Writer

Culture:

The square at Sage and 6th was the busiest corner in all Sarient. The two streets came to a junction and formed a square with most of three sides worth closed in with buildings, leaving an open square in the middle. Sage came from the east and exited the square through a tall arc at the far western side of the square, a tunnel built through the buildings themselves.
Originally home to a set of University dorms and two sides worth of shops and coffee houses flanking it, the square was now home to two of the largest rail companies in Dinland, the South Transit Company and Greenway Rail. The Dorms had been torn down in recent years to make room for the transfer platforms and massive service garage that both of the companies shared, but the stores had stayed on. No longer having to cater exclusively, the shops at Sage and 6th enjoyed a much higher volume of traffic. Everyone who worked in the South Side factory district had to, at some point in their day, pass through Sage and 6th.
As such the square had attracted other tenants; the nation's bank occupied a narrow space between two platforms and rose up in an umbrella like tower. The base only had room for several doors, two elevators and several teller boxes; the upstairs was significantly larger, as were the basement vaults and offices. Other less significant money lenders and accountants rented vault space from the Nations Bank. The Walton was a gentleman's club of high repute, walled off from the rest of the square with black iron and a small garden. Sherman's livery and tack, Maybelle fine dresses, various stores specializing in clothes or clocks or a hundred other things made up the malls on either side of the square, where the buildings at times were four stories tall. Each was attached to the other through a maze of halls and elevators, meaning that a shopper could go inside at one end and spend an entire day making their way through stores and come out on the other side.
The square itself was one of the only open squares left in the city where most of the streets had become clustered with houses and buildings to the point where even the streets themselves seemed to be shrinking. Street vendors, performers and baggers made the most of this, hawking wares from push wagons and begging for money by way of entertaining or pity. Children and dogs ran amid the legs of the workers that streamed constantly to and from their shifts in the factories, picking up garbage and scraps left by the commuters. It was a sea of gray workers tunics and grubby faces where the occasional bright woman's hat or fine business suit would drift, listless and then lost amid the shifting tides. The people were the water and the trams were the current.
Over the past ten years the rail companies had laid down mile after mile of track and set up the wires for the trams themselves. They moved almost endlessly, filling the city with noise, stopping only for a six hour period each night for maintenance. The rest of the time they moved people effectively, each seat crammed full and more passengers hanging off the side steps. Those that ran through the city ran on wires and electricity but the larger trams meant for crossing the Greenway to the North East were monsters powered on steam with elegant coach and dining cars for those that could afford it and box cars lined with benches for those that couldn't. From Sage and 6th a man could get anywhere in the country.