About six years ago I started a book that was so far outside my usual range that it might have been on another planet. The book became important to me for a number of reasons, most of which I won't go into, but for some reason even though the MC was nothing like me (aside from being female) the story resonated.
So I kept writing it, in fits and patches, and finally finished it last November. October? I think October, because in November I was playing NaNo.
I worked on it through March, and it was published April first. I'm not a big April Fools fan, so that didn't occur to me. I also don't do A to Z, so that passed me by as well. Whatever.
As the case may be, I had fiddled around with possibly doing a story about Old Frankie (one of the characters) but I decided to go in another direction and started writing about Mae's mother.
The book starts when Mae (or Mina) ran away at the age of fifteen. Her mother already has some substance abuse problems (which is part of why Mae left in the first place) and this just makes it worse.
So I find myself writing about substance abuse, a topic I have 0 experience with, but I've watched other people go through it. I'll need lots of beta readers on this one, so I make sure everything fits. I'm expecting that it will take nearly as long as the last.
I hope it works.
Yeah, that sounds like a difficult but important topic to have in your story.
ReplyDeleteI think it's going to be more difficult than Without A Voice, but well worth it if it works.
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