Mothers and Daughters
Mon 2005-03-07 22:44:07 (in context)
- 52,888 words (if poetry, lines) long
- 9.50 hrs. revised
You know, after reading this section of manuscript--pages 190 through 217, if you must know--I feel like I should make it absolutely clear, before anyone else reads it, that this novel is not autobiographical in any way that counts. It has a few details supplied from my high school memories, but the actual character dynamics are all imaginary. Sasha's big sister is not my Mary Sue. Well, in some ways she's everyone's Mary Sue--she's the model from which Sasha's notebook begins taking shape--but she's got her flaws.
And, just to be absolutely clear, her Mom is not my Mom.
In the course of marking up the manuscript, I've been thinking about a sub-plot that stayed fairly unexplored during the thirty hectic days of NaNoWriMo 2002. A story arc that never got a chance to arc. Sasha's big sister was the victim of an extremely traumatic experience some three years ago, and her mother's role in the aftermath was not a supportive one. At the time that Sasha's story starts, her mother continues to consider the older girl guilty. Both women, for their own reasons, are concerned that Sasha might stumble into a similar ordeal.
That their concern colors the story, I already knew. But I had neglected to explore, until now, the possibilities of the mother and the older sister coming toward some sort of reconciliation. There won't be any big epiphany, but I want to at least sow some quiet seeds that might indicate future growth in that direction after Sasha's story ends.
The reason I'm protesting about my own Mom here should be pretty obvious. Seems the older I get and the more of the world I see, the more I appreciate my parents; I hadn't realized that imagining dysfunctional families for my novels would have the same effect.
Mom, I love you bunches. I really do. You're probably not reading this, and you'd probably have no idea what I was talking about if you were, but I gotta say it: Thanks for being absolutely nothing like Diane Edgar-Greyson.
(Oh. And in other news, I'm out of the woods as far as plot tangles are concerned. Nothing like getting right up to the climax of the book to make things easy again! I guess plot tangles mostly occur when the author doesn't really know how to get from the premise to the climax and, consequently, babbles a lot.)