How does the mind of a writer work? Part two.

Yesterday, I walked you through the stream of consciousness behind a new idea for a story as the idea formed and took shape in my head. If you haven't read that, then hop back and give it a read. It'll set up what I'm talking about in today's post. Then after posting yesterday's blog I put the first words on paper and put down a tick over two thousand words (2295 to be precise.) Today I'll give you a look at the first two pages of the story (533 words) and explain why I started the book there, and chat a bit more about the process. So, here are the first two pages of the new story as they were written yesterday. (I haven't edited them yet, so excuse any miscues. This was copied and pasted as it was written.)

Chapter One

Pearl Hatcher heard the siren of the ambulance approaching and raced to the front door to see where it would stop.

Her partner Gayle was right behind her.

“Where’s it stopping?” asked Gayle.

“I don’t know, it’s not here yet. Mrs. Harvey’s son’s car is in her driveway, so maybe there? Maybe she’s having some trouble?”

“Oh, I hope not. She’s a very nice lady.”

Pearl nodded her head in agreement.

Pearl and Gayle were the ‘new neighbors’ in this neighborhood despite moving in nearly thirty years ago after retiring from teaching. The rest of the residents had lived there fifty years or longer. There had been some initial confusion over a pair of somewhat flamboyant lesbians moving into this quiet neighborhood, but that initial confusion had given way to acceptance and a live and let live attitude.

The fact that Gayle was a very handy person who could fix just about anything helped smooth the transition. Pearl was an avid gardener with a huge vegetable garden and she freely distributed surplus crops to the neighbors which also helped smooth the transition.

“What’s her son’s name?” asked Pearl who always had a hard time with names.

“James. He’s named after his father who was also James, but everyone called him Hank.”

“He’s just come out and is waving his arms. The ambulance must be going there.”

“Oh, dear. I hope it isn’t anything too serious.”

The ambulance pulled to a stop in front of Myrtle Harvey’s house and the crew quickly emerged and grabbed their bags before disappearing into the house.

“How old is she now?” asked Pearl.

“I think she just turned eighty one.”

“Oh, so she’s not that old. That’s just a few years older than us.”

“We’re not exactly spring chickens any more. I hope she’s okay. Has her son been there long?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t see him arrive.”

There were four small houses in this little neighborhood and the residents of three of them were now glued to the front windows and doors watching the ambulance that had pulled up and that signaled trouble for one of their own.

Inside the house at ten Garden Drive the ambulance crew was meeting some resistance from Myrtle Harvey.

“I’m fine, I tell you,” said Myrtle defiantly as the medic took her blood pressure one more time.

“Mom,” said her son. “You’re not fine. I came in and found you unconscious at the table. Your pulse and blood pressure are way too low. We’ve got to get you checked out at the hospital to figure out what’s going wrong.”

“I don’t want to go to the hospital. I’ll be fine if you’d all just leave me alone.”

Her son looked to the medic and asked, “Any idea what it could be?”

“I don’t think it’s anything too serious. Her EKG looks pretty good. If I had to venture a guess, I’d say it was medication related. She’s taking some pretty strong blood pressure medicine and it’s possible she took too strong of a dose. She might have taken two pills instead of one, or something along those lines. It’s pretty easy for people to get confused on medications.”

Okay, so that's how I've tentatively started the book. Bear in mind everything can and likely will change over time. If you were reading the book in the standard (for me anyway) six inch by nine inch paperback format that I use, you'd now have read the first two pages.

Why did I start the book there? I needed to introduce the characters and the setting while hopefully engaging the reader early. For those living in a major city hearing a siren is nothing. It's rare when you don't hear one, but for those who live in the country, or more rural areas, hearing a siren approach gets your attention. It means someone around you is in trouble and there aren't that many people around you, so it's a bit scarier. It's not the best hook I've ever used, but getting the reader wondering who the ambulance is for isn't a horrible way to start a story. (My personal favorite hook is the opening to my novel "Sara X.")

I want to show how close knit this little group of residents are and how they care for one another despite all being quite unique and different characters. In the other fifteen hundred plus words I wrote yesterday we meet the other two neighbors to give you a feel for them. I'll flesh them all out a bit more as I go on, but in those first two pages you've learned that there's a pair of older lesbians who are the new neighbors despite having now lived there thirty years. That tells you that the old neighbors lived there longer. This is a close knit, interconnected group.

And then we meet Mrytle. Mrytle (tentatively named after my grandmother Mrytle but names are easily changed later in the process) who is annoyed at all the fuss being made over her and just wants everyone to go away and leave her be. She could have early onset dementia of some sort, but it's very early on and most of the time she'll be sharp as a tack. She knows she gets a bit forgetful from time to time and that scares her, but she won't admit it. She loves her home and refuses to move out. She and her husband, now departed, moved in there over fifty years ago, they raised a family there, they've seen births, deaths, and the house is just filled with memories. She'd rather die there than move out. She's scared of losing control and will fight to the death to keep control.

Why didn't I start with Myrtle? It's hard to say really. I just didn't feel that starting with Myrtle was ideal. While this story does revolve around her, it also revolves around that small community of neighbors, so starting with a neighbor (or two) worried about their neighbors just felt right to me. I could have started anywhere, Myrtle could have been in the ambulance, in the ER, at home before the incident, or anywhere else, but this just felt like the right place to start. 

Right up front we meet the "new neighbors" who have lived there thirty years now. We learn they're a pair of lesbians and one of them is very handy and can fix anything (which makes her very popular in a neighborhood) and the other one is an avid gardener who shares her surplus with the neighbors. We feel their compassion and warmth towards Myrtle as they worry about her and hope she's okay.

A little farther on in the story they see Myrtle being loaded into the ambulance and are relieved that she looks fairly good. Gayle races out to talk to Myrtle's son as he prepares to follow the ambulance to the hospital and learns what she can from him. Then she gets hailed by Augie, their often nude, older male neighbor who's always lived alone in a very small house just filled with electronics and dominated by a huge Ham radio antenna. 

After Gayle tells him what she's learned she's flagged down by Mrs. Buckley who lives next door to Myrtle. Mrs. Buckley is a widow who largely replaced her departed husband with cats. She lives in an old mobile home with thirty or so cats and more coming all the time. When I finished writing yesterday Myrtle was being discharged from the hospital and was heading back home with her son and his wife. They were trying to convince her to accept their help in handling her medications and adapting to the aging process,but she's not overly receptive to the idea.

So, today I'll continue to flesh out the characters and the story. I'll have Mrytle return home and her neighbors stop by to check up on her and offer her assistance if she needs anything. She'll thank them but insist she's fine. She'll head next door to help me develop Mrs. Buckley's character a bit more. I'm going to have Mrs. Buckley suffering from a bit of agoraphobia. She hates to leave her little trailer and the cats and won't even go out for her mail. She's a very sweet, loving older woman, but life has been a bit harsh to her and largely broken her. Myrtle and the other neighbors look out for her and support her. (Later in the story Myrtle invites Gayle and Pearl to have one of their weekend parties at her house and she manages to drag Mrs. Buckley from her house to join them where some recreational marijuana combined with wine has a very interesting effect on both Myrtle and Mrs. Buckley. I'm not sure how I'll set that all up yet, but the scene lives in my head and if I can get what I'm seeing there down on paper it should be quite entertaining.

Before I start writing each day I read what I wrote the day before. I do whatever editing jumps off the page at me and then I start on the new day's writing. This 'edit as I go' approach works well for me. It helps me keep my characters consistent and by editing as I go I tend to avoid the big goofs. (Or so I like to tell myself.) And that's what I'm off to do now. It's be around 8:40 AM locally as I get started today and I'll write up to around eleven or eleven thirty, then quit for lunch, if not the day and let the ideas percolate in the old head a bit more. I should get another two to three thousand words down today, maybe more. The story is now largely formed in my head and simply needs to be fleshed out and put on paper.