Knocking at the Door

Poor Laney is stuck knocking on my front door, two young kids and some emergency provisions in tow.

Actually she's at my main POV character's front door, of course, and she's growing angrier by the minute.

I haven't had any time to write in the past several days, due to a combination of lovely weather , my own fatigue, and a compulsive need to spring clean before my mother comes to watch my kids for a few days. (Yes, I'm taking my husband and leaving town and my girls for 4 days/3 nights.... I can't wait!)

Yet I've spent this busy time thinking through the next few scenes, and they feel ready to jump onto the computer. In fact, it feels a lot like a few years ago when I read Not Without My Daughter during our holiday visits with family. I squirmed through obligatory conversations and long, drawn out meals, feeling that every moment I put off reading was an extra moment of torture for Betty and her daughter. They languished, hostages to their own husband and father, because I was eating a cheese ball and playing Taboo with my in-laws.

This sense of suspended reality is much more intense when the story on hold is my own. Laney has changed a lot, over the past days. I've trapped her in front of Ellie's front door, and she's become more bitter, more mistrusting, and more self-righteous than she was if I had written her piece last Wednesday, when I intended.

So, today is the day. Laney's knock will be answered, and Ellie will be gracious, if greatly put out, that she must host this unexpected intrusion of her past during a crisis that seems to be boundless.

What fun!