The Tale Finally Comes to Life

I really wasn't planning on staying up until three in the morning, but after an abundance of Halloween candy and a night full of movies, I found myself up and writing at the computer. Starting the beginning of a 50,000 word story is particularly hard because I seem to want to come up with the best sentence that I can come up with, followed by much erasing . . . writing . . . and then erasing again.


I'm kind of surprised that I was even up that late, since the night before I had been sick and up to midnight and on twitter because I couldn't sleep. And this morning, our door rang at the lovely time of 7:30 AM, and couldn't go back to sleep--so what better way than to write and add onto the epilogue excerpt to my story.This is my third year participating in Nanowrimo, and every year it tends to get a little better and more planned. So I came up with a short photo shoot to introduce my main character just briefly, as well as an excerpt from my story, "Broken".





Meet Dr. Marian Jacobsen
Yes, the red head that I've been using for the headers to introduce details of my story. I have no idea how I came up with her. I'm pretty sure that it was just a random moment where I got really interested to create a story.





And the excerpt . . . 

As I watched the movers bring into my belongings into the house; most definitely when they were bringing in the white grand piano that I had bought a couple years back, I felt like I had definitely had moved into the wrong neighborhood .

Allow me to explain.

Four months ago before officially “moving out” of my home in California, I was thought crazy that after only a couple months time of searching for a job—in change of my fast life—that I would find this house, in a quiet neighborhood of Pennsylvania.

Why did I move? Had to be the most sought out questions by neighbors, co-workers, family, friends and even strangers. Often, I felt like I couldn’t even answer the question. There was no logical or rational explanation: to seek out a new job and move clear across the United States when I had a great job, family nearby and friends that were so supportive.

Besides, I would have never become Dr. Marian Jacobsen without them.  Now I was thousands of miles away; after ignoring protests and pleadings to not move. Instead I promised to write letters and make long-distance phone calls every once in awhile after I had gotten settled in.

There was already talk of traveling down here some time, as I made last minute dinner dates with some of my closest and dearest friends before leaving home. The thing is, is that I left out the most important details of my move. The fact that the neighborhood that I had moved into seemed . . . broken, remote and in shambles. Sadly, I didn’t feel the same way about it, as much as I did with the house that I was now going to be living in—possibly for the rest of my life.

Having driven into the neighborhood again for the first time in months, I felt like it was a ghost of a town that had been plagued by some deadly disease--the reason that I hadn’t told the people closest to me; exactly where I would be living, and what this place was really like.

A part of me felt embarrassment. I had been raised better than this. I was one of the most sought out doctors in California that my patients would have moved just to be my patients again. Of course, that was just crazy talk—and I didn’t allow it to happen. Instead, I bribed them with the second best doctor, who just happened to be taking my place: Dr. Jake Donovan.

We went out once, which was completely a mistake. We weren’t anything alike, and seemed to clash more than we worked together. It was a fleeting thought that I had moved to Pennsylvania because more than lately we had been falling back in love, trying to give the romance a second chance—only to have an awful breakup instead.

“Where do you want this?”  The mover’s voice, seemed to take the focus off my thoughts as I came back to reality. Instead of answering, I found the bald spot on his head a lot more interesting than directing them to where I would like to place my furniture.

After shooting them an apologetic look, I realized the strain in his voice was because he and his partner were holding my rather heavy leather couch in their grasp, that I finally directed them to put it against the wall in the living room. They moved away and went back through the open front door, while I admired that the couch had already brought some color to the stark walls of the house.

 I felt myself sigh as I touched my hand to the wall, and looked down at the dark wooden floor; envisioning the walls were painted a vibrant color, and decorated to perfection—only to have it fade when one of the mover’s feet clicked against the metal railing at the bottom frame of the door.

This time I was quicker to direct them towards the correct destinations: the kitchen, and then the living room, bedroom, and spare room. The rest of the boxes were labeled for direct delivery and I took the time to uncover the couch, piano, bookshelf, and a coffee table; carefully folding up the plastic covers and stuffing them into a small enclosed space underneath the staircase.

Soon after, the movers had finished unloading and left me with a few congratulations on the move to my new house, with hope that I would enjoy it here. As I walked over to my door and leaned my head against the frame—I somehow doubted that.