A NEW START

by Margie Senechal

This year I've been focused on writing before work--getting up between 5-5:30, going through my shower routine, playing my daily Wordle, eating breakfast and then putting my butt in chair to write.

I generally get about 30 minutes of uninterrupted time and plunk out between 3-600 words. I print those pages to take to work and on occasion am able to add more words for my day.

Up until the last two weeks, I'd been following this new routine without fail--adding around 3K a week to my Work-in-progress (WIP).

Then work rose up to supersede my life. Call-outs and an impending inventory took away my precious writing bubble.

In those ten days or so, I had time to mentally review my book and I came to the realization that while I've been cranking out the words, I'm not moving forward.

I imagine this book taking place over the course of two or three weeks. And 45+K words in, and I'm still in the first half of the first week. 

I really don't want to write a 200K tome. Hmmm...

Yesterday, I went to B&N armed with a favorite notebook and pen. While JV meandered through the books, I sat down and wrote a new beginning. I think I like it and it changes the tone a bit while introducing the ghost of the main character's husband straight-away. 

Jillian Kendall was haunted by her dead husband. His voice forever in her head. Sometimes he offered advice and other times he commented on what she chose to watch mindlessly on t.v. Since his death two years ago, he'd yet to be silenced.

"And you love it that way," he said as she tried to explain the situation to her grief therapist whom she was visiting for the first time under duress from her daughters. 

"I really don't," she hissed back. 

"What was that?" The therapist looked up from the notebook she'd peppered with inkblots and phrases. It didn't appear that she was actually taking notes as much as twiddling away Jillian's paid hour.

"He just said, I love it that way."

"What way?"

Why, oh why was she seeing a therapist? This girl was barely out of med school--if in fact, she actually had gone to medical school. Jillian scanned the walls to check for official verification that this "doctor" could help her How could this child begin to understand the depths of Jillian's pain?

"Depths? I honestly inspired depths of pain?" He sounded far too pleased with himself.

"Not right this moment. Depths of irritance, maybe."

Have a great day! See you in a couple weeks.