moments of awesome

Taking some time away from writing to devote more time to development was the best thing I could’ve done. I finally started re-writing “Tiny Shadows,” and it’s a whole different book, a whole different process. I have a better understanding of the tone I want. I have a better understanding of what I want to take place (although writers know that the characters have their own intentions and sometimes take the story in another direction despite our best efforts to play God). I started writing it, and it just felt so much more natural this time.

I generally have a “this line is awesome” moment once every week or two when I write, but I’ve had several of them since starting TS, in the course of only a few days. I thought I’d document a few.

Scene One: The Slumber Party

…all she saw was red. Not the shade of red her best friend had insisted she paint her fingernails, but a much deeper, darker, brown-tinged red, seeping through her white capris and soiling that perfect sofa.

I felt this captured the moment in which adolescence was lost.

Scene Two: Consciousness

“Are you really a doctor?”
“Yes.” Then her lips pursed. “Well, I was.” The girl narrowed her eyes and waited for explanation. Dr. Wright obliged. “The DLP took my license away when my clinic was unable to obtain admission privileges at a hospital within fifty miles, that was also ranked among the top ten percent of the state’s reproductive healthcare facilities.” She paused for a moment while Averie digested the information. “There are no such hospitals within fifty miles of Noblesville.”
“So you’re not a doctor.”
“Not anymore.”

This isn’t entirely fiction, and I don’t think people pay attention closely enough to realize this. Clinics that provide valuable healthcare to women are being shut down all over the country because they can’t meet impossible hospital admission standards, which are completely unnecessary. The government is trying to stop abortion, with no regard to the other services it is depriving women of when it does so.

(continued)

“Shouldn’t I be at a hospital? With all this blood?” She grabbed the plastic-and-cotton thing beneath her. It felt suspiciously like a puppy pad. Wasn’t this whole situation demeaning enough, without having to sit on the same thing that was used to protect carpet from puppy piddle? She shoved it back onto the bed. “Where’s my mom?”

I wanted to remind the reader that this girl is still only 16 years old. Give her some humanness. Some childlike reaction to her very grown-up predicament.

Scene Three: 48 Hours

If she had been expecting the doctor’s office to be a hidden room at the end of a secret passageway, a hundred feet below the earth, protected by fingerprint encryption and retinal scans, then she was sorely disappointed. It was just a bedroom, converted to be used as an office. There was nothing extraordinary about it. No pictures depicting women’s suffrage. No antique clamps used as primitive abortion tools. Not even a proper deadbolt on the door, and it certainly didn’t look soundproof.

She hoped this wasn’t where the doctor kept her records.

The reality of Averie’s situation is that she cannot seek conventional medical care. But her perceived reality and the actual reality are two very different things.

Scene Three: 48 Hours

The woman tucked a lock of blonde-brown hair behind her ear. “Once you report a miscarriage,” she replied slowly, with calculation, “it will always be in the system. You will always have had a miscarriage. You will always have committed some reproductive infraction, and it will be considered in all other decisions affecting your healthcare, and otherwise, for the rest of your life. Every Mandatory Physical Exam. Every pregnancy checkup.” She paused. “Even on your employment applications.”

“My employment applications?” she asked incredulously.

The doctor nodded. “Your reproductive health is public record once you’ve had a miscarriage. You’ve committed a misdemeanor. It’s no different than urinating on a sidewalk while intoxicated.”

“I’d never do that.”

“But you had a miscarriage.”

“That’s different!” she protested.

“No,” the doctor said firmly, “it isn’t.”

I think excerpt this serves an excellent purpose. It sheds a light on the kind of future a woman could expect in a dystopian world where her reproductive decisions, and even complications, are not private. I want to distinguish that her body is not her own, no matter how gently the law purports to treat her personal tragedy. I think this analogy does a fine job.

It’s been a slow process, but it’s been a really, really good process. I’m very happy with the way my first draft is coming out, and I can truly see this story on the shelves someday in the not-too-distant future. I may not get much of a following. I may not make the New York Times Best Seller’s list. But I will be writing about something that truly moves me, something that gives me purpose and lights my fire.

For me, for now, that’s enough.