The Difficult Child

Take one reclusive teenager, add an anxious eight-year-old who has obsessive/compulsive tendencies, mix together with a depressive mother on the verge of suicide, sprinkle with a flashy neighbor woman who seems to have the world wrapped around her pinky finger, and what do you get??? An incomplete second novel, that’s what. This is a story about the female species in all her glorious complexity, but also how role models, like pocket change and gray hairs, can crop up in the most unexpected of places.

While my first novel, Rosetta Stones, has its fair share of female characters and explores mother-daughter and sister-sister relationships, it mostly focuses on the friendship of four individuals, three of which are male. It’s a story about how adversity can force you to grow up, in some cases, overnight. A bit more on the serious side than this next one I’m writing, even with the issues of depression and suicide intermingled.

But speaking of overnight, this entire second novel could easily end up sloshing down the drain pipes in as much time because it simply is REFUSING to gelatinize. There are still lots of adventures to cook up in my head and fray-like ends to mend, which all boils down to work on my part. But, I’m telling you, there’s something evasive about this story! While Rosetta Stones took me seven years to write, it was always there. Sitting. And patiently, I might add. Waiting for my computer to work. Waiting for my kids to go to sleep. Or to STAY asleep. Waiting for the laundry to be washed and the house to be empty for one hour, JUST ONE, so that I could open the spigot and let it flow. It was THERE.

Not this one. Nope nope nope. This one is worse than my pet ferret Charlie was at being coy and requiring lots of cooing and coddling to get any kind of reaction out of it. It’s as if #2 is resentful of the attention that I’ve been giving to #1 while I try hard to make it pretty and perfect for its release into this Rosetta Stonesless world. (Which cross your fingers, won’t be Rosetta Stonesless too much longer.) I know I'm giving this "story" lots of credit, most of it probably undue, but there was just so much soul to my last one that I felt like it took on a life all its own. I'm just waiting for this next one to relax a little, trust me to do it justice, and then OPEN UP like a good story should.

Anyway, we’ll see how it acts once I’m finally able to give it the attention it requires. *deep sigh* If someone had told me back in my childless days that my most difficult child was going to end up being a pile of notes and a fragmented story, I’d not have believed them.