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A Story About a Girl Called Annabel

In 1998, I was a college student taking a Creative Writing course so that one day I could fulfill my dream of becoming a writer. In that class, I wrote a short story called “The Attic”. It was about a teenage girl from the 1950’s whose parents die in a car crash, and the girl is sent to live with her aunt and uncle. The uncle sexually abuses her. Most of the abuse happens in the attic. The girl doesn’t tell her aunt, and the abuse continues until the uncle dies.

The girl endures her aunt’s mourning for the man she loved, while never knowing the monstrous behavior he was capable of. The abuse by his hands that sent her niece to bed shaking at the thought of being awakened by the creak of the opening of her bedroom door, is finally over.

He is dead. The abuse is over. At least Annabel believes it is and that he is gone for good until noises from the attic awaken her at night. Through more events we realize that his ghost lingers in the attic, to further torment the young girl because she hadn’t been through enough shit already.

This was the short story called “The Attic”. The writing was shoddy. The plot was unbearable and extremely heavy-handed. The characters were underdeveloped, with dialogue that was completely unbelievable. No one is as oblivious as I made the aunt out to be, but it is a story my younger self wrote as she was beginning her journey to becoming a writer. It was far from perfect, but what of anything without experience and knowledge and practice is perfect?

The story of Annabel now is very different. The book that was inspired by that horrible short story hardly resembles the story at all. So why do I even write this? Why even bring up this plot that has nothing to do with the book? Maybe because I am certain Annabel and the Boy in the Window could never have been written without that short story.

That day in 2013, when going through a bin of decades-old writing, I came across a folder with “The Attic” inside it. I read it and could remember writing it fifteen years earlier. I briefly wondered why the heck I had kept it that long. Why hadn’t I dumped it in the trash where bad writing belongs?

I don’t know what made me tuck the story away in an old bin, but I’m glad I did because that story was the catalyst for my recent published novel.

I would make many changes and countless revisions to the story. I would bring pages of those revisions to a writing workshop course I enrolled at a local community college and be so encouraged by the suggestions of my peers. They kept me going. Kept me believing I could be a writer. Over nine years later, I still have those pages with the markings of a class full of inspiring writers.

I worked on my new “Annabel” story. For a long time, I didn’t have a name for it. It was just “Annabel.” But I often got lost in the plot. On many occasions I had no idea where the story was headed or what the story was that I even wanted to tell. I set it aside many times to write and publish other stories like, Her Name, Loving Again, and A Penny on the Tracks. Until, finally, I said “Enough. Finish the story no matter how long it takes.”

And I did. I finished the story that would become Annabel and the Boy in the Window.

Annabel and the Boy in the Window is a story set in the mid 1950’s about living against societal norms and expectations. Annabel is a teenage girl who has little interest in marriage or having children. She desires an education and a career, but her alcoholic father stands in her way. Annabel sneaks out of her bedroom window at night and walks the streets of her quiet suburban town, while dreaming of a different life. She peers through peoples’ windows, eager for a glimpse of what a normal and happy family life looks like.

On one of her nightly walks, she sees Danny through his window and is immediately captivated by him. His soothing smile and gentle demeanor give her the feeling of safety and security that living in her own home fails to provide. Danny, the popular high school quarterback, is two years older than Annabel. He and Annabel run in very different social circles, so when Danny approaches her in the school hall one day, no one is more surprised than Annabel that a simple conversation about schoolwork would lead to football games, dances, and affairs of the heart Annabel never experienced before but only read about in books.

Annabel has dreams of her own, but when her abusive father becomes a threat to wreck those dreams, all seems lost until a secret from his past comes out and changes everything.

And that’s the premise of my story about a girl called Annabel. She had many stories through the years, but we finally settled on the right one.

If you’ve made it this far in the post and you’re a writer. Never give up on your writing. Keep writing. Also, never throw work away no matter how bad you think it is. It may come back to inspire your next published book.

Just Write

I recently found a piece of paper with my 2017 writing goals listed on them. It was depressing because on the list were stories that three years later I still haven’t finished. A closer look at the list made me feel a little less of a failure when I realized my writing goals in 2017 were quite ambitious, but still, I need to do better.

One of the stories I was to finish in 2017 started out as a novella, but now is over three hundred pages. I’d write a little. Stop. Work on something else. Then go back to it. But for the last year and half I have given the piece all of my attention, stopping only to write two short stories. Twice, I’ve changed the course of the plot and have deleted over a hundred pages–months of work–but the plot change was necessary for the story.

I’m sure I can not be the only writer who wonders if she should have written more with the time at hand, but sometimes the words do not flow easily. I write, forcing out words I know will eventually be deleted, but I write them anyway, because a writer writes. Maybe not always well. Maybe with words she knows will be replaced, but she writes.

Keep writing. Write through blocks. Write through distraction. Write through internal doubt.

Just Write.

Writing pen and paper

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I’m working on a story based in the 1950’s about a teenage girl living with an abusive alcoholic father. While struggling to endure the dysfunction that is her home life, the girl yearns to defy the conformity that is expected of her life. She resents her mother’s docile and submissive role in their home. The girl, Annabel, wants to be more than wife and mother, she wants the freedom to be anything she wants.

I wrote this story in college some twenty years ago. The words sat in a binder collecting dust for some time until I decided to give it new life. Many changes have been made and so far that “short” story has been revised to a three-hundred page novel, but the journey has not come without frustrating days when I had no idea where the story was heading and was tempted to dump it.

Don’t do that, writers. Keep writing. Don’t dump your stories no matter how lost you may be in navigating its direction. Keep writing. A new day brings a new, clearer mind.

Although I’m not yet finished with the story, and don’t know exactly how the story will end, I’m confident I’m heading in the right direction. Each day brings me one scene closer to the writing that final sentence.

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So You Want to be a Writer

I was at a bar one night and ran into a woman I used to date over fifteen years ago. In our exchange of pleasantries, my being a writer came up and immediately my ex grabbed my arm and exclaimed to me with vigor how she is planning on writing her autobiography because she’s led a very interesting life, and all of her friends tell her she just has to write a book.

I told her I was sure she had many great stories to tell, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they could fill a book, but I asked if she’d had any training in writing. The uncertain look on her face answered my question. She hadn’t studied writing in any way past a classroom in high school, but figured since she had a story to tell (most people who are alive have a story to tell. It’s called life.) and knew how to write in complete sentences, she could write a book.

I didn’t roll my eyes in front of her. I’m not that rude. But I did suggest to her that if she was serious about writing her book, she should enroll in a writing course at her local college. Three months before I contracted my first book, Her Name, I had taken a writing course at my local college and it helped me more than I imagined one class would. I was lucky to have had some terrific writers in my class who gave me incredible notes on my story, which I still possess over five years later.

After I published my second book, Loving Again, I enrolled in another writing course at the same college. It was during that course that my third book, A Penny on the Tracks, was contracted. I value all of the critiques of my work by my peers and instructors because they have helped me become a better writer.

But as a writer, I have to put in the work, and it bothers me to no end when people think they can just pick up a pen and start writing the masterpiece that is their life without studying the craft.

I’m writing my current book in a point-of-view I’ve never attempted — subjective omniscient. My former books were written in first-person and third-person limited. This is completely new to me. I feel like I’m starting all over again as a writer, and that isn’t such a bad feeling. I may enroll in another writing course. I need the guidance my fellow writers have given me on my previous works for the story I am writing now.

The writing community is tremendously supportive.

I thank all the writers who share their time and their knowledge to inspire and encourage those aspiring to write.

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Photo courtesy of Freedigitalphotos.net

Never…Stop…Writing

I’m currently working on my third book. My first book, Her Name, was released last year. My second book, Loving Again, will be out this November.

I have a tentative title for my new book. The beginning of the story is set and the last scene has already been written. What I don’t have is a middle. I don’t yet know the words that will fill the pages from 27-103. The bones of my story lack any meat.

Knowing how the story ends should make the book that much easier to write because the path couldn’t get anymore clearer. I am writing towards something. The signs are all pointing specifically to one place with precise directions– turn left, then right, then left again. But instead of driving straight to my destination, I’m making unnecessary U-turns.

Writing is hard, but it doesn’t have to be this hard and I know that.

I also know the first draft is only for me. I’m supposed to get the words out first and edit later. I’m not supposed to go back and rewrite scenes.

Move forward. Keep going. Don’t stop writing.

If something is unclear about the plot or character development is weak, make a note and highlight it. I can get back to it later, but whatever I do I’m not supposed to stop writing.

Never…Stop…Writing.

Yet, I’ve been staring at blank pages for months now, lucky to get a couple dozen scenes written that most likely will be long gone once the final draft is completed.

Where I had planned a first draft to be finished by Aug 1 (not gonna happen), I am now clinging to the hope that it will be completed by the time Loving Again is released.

I have numerous works-in-progress, unfinished stories, sitting in a desk drawer beside me. I don’t remember the specific reasons that made me stop writing each of those stories, but I assume self-doubt took over me, as it is trying to do now. I do recall many moments of poring over a story and questioning whether I had anything left in me to write. I still have those thoughts and I’ve only completed two books, and they were novellas.

My writing journey has only begun and already I’m hanging myself over the cliff, pressuring myself with the stressful worries of “Will I make it?”

My passion is writing. It’s always been writing. I know I will never stop, just as I know I will complete my third book and absolutely fall in love with it, and then wonder what all the fuss was about.

What I’m experiencing now is a tiny detour, and as frustrated as I may feel, I know this diversion will make me more appreciative of the moment I finally reach my destination, filled with sweet gratification.

All I have to do is Never…Stop…Writing.