I’ve been writing stories since elementary school. In the last decade or so I’ve written three book drafts and they’re all in various stages of editing. Haven’t tried to publish anything yet because I’m a perfectionist and a scaredy cat. One is close, but I’m tired of the editing process. I’ve decided to take a break and come back to that project in a few weeks. Hopefully clear my head and do one more round of editing before I submit some queries and/or pursue publishing.
In the meantime, I’ve started a new book. Starting a new project is always my favorite part. I love writing a first draft. It’s the work after that’s hard. I mean I guess it’s all hard, but I love the part where I just let myself write, where I can be creative and I don’t worry so much about prose or grammar or inconsistencies. It’s the best feeling – letting my fingers fly across the keyboard and my imagination completely take over. Even if it’s terrible which, honestly, sometimes it is.
Anyway, this new book idea I have takes place in a small fictional town in Alabama. It follows a born and bred there boy and a misfit girl who become unlikely friends. He’s steadfast and solid and dependable. She’s wild and free spirited and spontaneous. He has a plan for his life, a plan that eventually means settling down in the same town he grew up in and running his family farm. She has no plan. She just knows she wants to get out of dodge, see the world, travel and not stay in one place for too long.
They’re total opposites but their friendship runs deep and eventually grows into something that’s so much more. They are intrinsically linked. But what do you do when you both want entirely different things? When, inevitably, someone has to sacrifice everything they want in order to be with the other person, is love worth it?
That’s the idea I’m toying with. I’ve just started mapping it out and I wrote a brief beginning. Thought I’d share it here:
Benson – 2005
written by stephanie coder, from my unpublished manuscript
Piper was never going to stick around. No one could say she sprung it on me. I knew it was inevitable. Not only because she talked about how much she hated Whitmore, Alabama, but because I knew her, better than I’ve ever known anyone. Maybe even on a soul level.
My soul was steadfast, tied to this land, this place. Mine needed the open country, the stability, the winding back roads. And her soul? Wild. Restless. Her soul needed to run, needed newness and adventure and spontaneity. I didn’t want her to stay when it was so obvious she didn’t belong here.
I keep reminding myself that this wasn’t a surprise. I was prepared for this. I was prepared to watch her walk away. I encouraged it, even. She can’t help it that she’s not meant to stay, just as much as I can’t help that I’m not meant to go.
But despite the preparation, despite the foresight, despite the knowledge that she was always going to walk out of my life, that she was never mine to begin with, despite all of that, it still feels like something sharp is piercing through my gut when she leaves. The door closes behind her and it’s like all the air has been sucked out of the room. I struggle to breathe and have to take a seat. It’s like I just finished a suicide run at football practice.
Only I can’t just breathe through it. I know it won’t pass in a moment, this urge to vomit, this feeling of drowning. I know I’ll have to live with it until, hopefully, time does what it does. Time is my only hope of dimming this terrible feeling that can only be described as heartbreak.
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I hope I get to read your stories one day 😍
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Thanks Rachael! Hopefully someday 🙂
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