Connie, I usually define a draft by its sense of completion. If when you're done, you think, "Okay, this is the story as it stands," then save it. And when you start making changes, you call it a new draft, and you can make little changes on that one to your heart's content until you decide, "Okay, this is the story as it stands."

It's funny cause I was looking at my documents and I found some stories I'd started years ago. They're only a few beginning paragraphs, and if I do pick them up, I'd like to save those few beginning paragraphs regardless of whether I change them completely in the very first draft, since I'm so far away from when I initially thought of the story. So that's a case where I would save something that's incomplete.

Connie, with minor tweaks--changes within a scene--I just change them and leave it at that. With major changes--rewriting a scene--I'll usually keep the old version for awhile just so if I want to use any of the information later, I won't have to recreate it from scratch.

Ugh. I'm fighting writer's block, and I think it's because I'm working on scenes from Anna's POV immediately after Sebastian's death, and I'm just stuck on what she would be feeling and how to portray it in a way that's both believable and sympathetic.

Basically, they had a terrible marriage, so I don't think she'd be human if some part of her wasn't relieved to be free. Yet she can't actually rejoice in a death, so she's going to spend some time feeling guilty over that normal human reaction. So far I've got her doing a combination of reflecting upon what went wrong with her marriage, and probably blaming herself more and Sebastian less than she did while he was alive, and focusing resolutely on little physical details--is there a place in the village where they're staying where she can buy what she needs for a basic mourning wardrobe, how soon can she find a way to travel to Lisbon so she can sail for England, etc.?

Does that work? I'm all at sea here because I have so little experience of death, and none at all where my relationship with the deceased was weird and complicated.

She might have some authentic mourning that now there is no chance to fix things, no chance to apologize or be apologized to, etc. Is there a reason she married him other than he was suitable? Some characteristic that she authentically respected? She can mourn the loss of that, as well.

Susan, I would think the grief over the shortened life, the loss of the potential, the absence of the familiar person, whether loved or not, would be foremost. She doesn't strike me as a Faith type, aware and cynical, but a lady of her time -- If she felt relief right away, I don't think she'd recognize it for what it is. Instead, I think the relief would trickle in slowly, maybe shock at being able to laugh at something "too soon", realizing that she doesn't feel as cramped, as constrained, and building from there.

the absence of the familiar person,

Oh, yeah. They may have had a difficult relationship, but there was still a commonality between them. Someone who knew her reactions, someone I'm assuming she could at least have a conversation with where they both understood the underlying assumptions. Something such as thinking in the morning, "I must remember to make sure there are four eggs poached in a particular way--no, wait. He's not here to eat those anymore."

Deena's absolutely right. The first thing would be shock, and the numbness that accompanies sudden grief of someone close to us, whether it was intimate closeness or not. Sebastian was a pillar of her world as it was, and now the foundations of that life are shaken. She's adrift and, from personal experience, she would probably focus on details she can control, like her wardrobe, and take great pains to get it right because it keeps her from thinking about things she cannot control, or those beginning flutters of relief that any woman in her position would instantly believe to be wrong and bad.

There's a reason they give victims of emotional shock a glass of water, have them sit down, have them focus on something mundane and accomplishable. The hind brain goes on, copes, deals with and assimilates the information, so that the next time the conscious is reminded of it, it's less of a shock. This repeats, over hours, and days, and weeks, until the bereaved is able to take a more comprehensive look at the relationship and make some judgements about it. And also about the immediate future.

(Stupid internet went down while I was trying to post this half an hour ago.)

Is there a reason she married him other than he was suitable? Some characteristic that she authentically respected? She can mourn the loss of that, as well.

She married him when she was 19, on less than a month's acquaintance. She'd been through two London Seasons where she was very popular, since she was lucky enough to be vivacious, quite pretty, and very rich indeed. But she never fell in love, and she was starting to get bored with the social whirl. So when she met Sebastian over the summer, he immediately attracted her with his military demeanor, serious nature, and all-around difference from the other men who'd been courting her. In her youthful inexperience, she mistook infatuation for love and discovered too late that she'd married a control freak with a misogynistic streak.

For most of her marriage, she tries to make the best of it and avoid conflict by at least outwardly complying with his wishes, but in the weeks just before his death she'd hit her breaking point and started openly defying him. As a result, their relationship went from coldly civil to frequent shouting matches. And her last words to him, at the end of such a fight, were "Just go, Sebastian."

OK, keeping in mind that this is sloppy, raw, shitty first draft writing, here's what I've got of her waking up the morning after his death. Does this sound like I'm in the right emotional ballpark?

When she awoke the next morning, the silence disconcerted her. At the very beginning of consciousness, she thought she was back in Scotland, in her own room in the castle. As she came to full awareness, she noticed the warm, heavy air, how narrow and lumpy her bed was, and knew where she was. But it was so quiet. No one snored softly beside her, nor had she been awakened by an impatient hand at her shoulder and a none-too-quiet voice telling her they must march in half an hour’s time. And then she remembered. Sebastian. Gone.

The silence felt wrong. Tonight she’d ask Alex and Helen if she could put a pallet on the floor in the room they were sharing with the children and the maids. It wasn’t as if she’d be spoiling their privacy.

As she sat up, she noticed a familiar dull ache in the pit of her stomach, exactly on schedule. So that was that, then. She would not bear Sebastian a posthumous child. She wept at that, for the first time since learning of his death.

I think that's fine, Susan.

If I may:

Dawn was beginning to lighten the air when she woke. Gods, but her muscles were stiff. She closed her eyes against the growing light and wound the blanket tighter about her, inhaling John’s scent, and hers, together. A smile touched her features. He must have risen already and be about finding breakfast.

John.

Memory flooded her and sleep fled. A nightmare, she must have dreamed….

She reached out to the ground next to where she lay, and it was cold, cold. No one had lain beside her in the night. John was not there, had not been there. The chill seeped up from the ground and into her body despite the blanket, but she did not move to rise.

And later:

Ellen looked away from the fire, off among the trees. She forgot, when she was tired, or preoccupied; she still expected John to come walking into camp, to crouch briefly at the fire and meet her eyes across it. She could see the light in his eyes and the grin that he kept for her alone. She had so much to tell him: how his horse was behaving, how heavy the mail was, how trying it was keeping the petty differences among the rebels from flaring into quarrels. In her mind’s eye, John’s grin widened to a smile and he stood to come to her, and an owl called nearby. Rainwater dripped from an overhanging branch and trickled down the side of her face; it was cold. She shivered, and went to wake Thomas for the next watch.