I have been writing another fictional story. I don’t know where it came from…but I suddenly find that I have a lot of material. I copied and pasted what I had already written into Microsoft Word and in three weeks, I have written 60,000 words. I have the rest of the story in my head, and time permitting I will try to type it up. Then I need to edit. Editing is painful!
It’s kind of a story of a young woman who is lost and alone in many ways. She has no living family members. She has no close friends. She works and plays and tries to find somewhere, something, that resembles love. But she is another learner at love and makes lots of mistakes along the way. I am developing her character carefully. I am still not sure how I want her story to end. Will she find real love? Will she just learn to live with loneliness? Will there be a hero or rescuer? Will she conquer alone? I have lots of ideas, but I expect that by the time we get to the conclusion, the questions her story has raised will point to one answer.
Anyway…now I am trying to play around with how to start the story. I have made a start, but it needs more time and attention:
It’s still fresh in my mind as if it was just yesterday that he walked up those stairs. I still feel that clench in my gut as I felt the threat of him approaching. The hairs stood on the back of my neck. My face was stern, my body stiff, my voice cold.
I did everything I could to send out the message I did not want to speak to him, that he was an unwelcome invader. I was hostile and unresponsive to his friendly questions. I gave him monotone yes and no replies. He detected I was not at ease with him. He persisted cautiously, maintaining an appropriate distance.
Somehow he managed to figure out why I was there on my own. He carefully broke down my defences. I gave in. I gave up. I gave him a chance. I still remember it all vividly.
I am not sure where to begin to tell you our tale. I know my side of the story better than his. But I often think that for a stranger to hear, it makes sense to know how he it must have played out for him. For him it was all fairly simple, straightforward. For me it was anything but simple. It was complicated and crazy and contorted.
Before I let you see what happened from his perspective, let me introduce myself. My name is Hayley. Hayley Buchanan, born in 1987 to Paul and Collette Buchanan. I lived the first few years of my life in Galesburg, Illinois. I left home to go and study English Literature at the University of Virginia.
Caramel 