Excerpt from my novel...
I've mentioned briefly that I'm writing a novel. I have this story to tell, I just had a hard time finding a voice to tell it with. A friend kept encouraging me to write. "Write a novel, not the poetry you write." He would say. We would have brainstorming sessions trying to come up with ideas for my story. We made a novel outline to jump-start the process. It didn't really get me anywhere. Then one day, I started writing. It wasn't the story in the outline. But it was the story I needed to tell. I had just needed time to figure it out first. So I'll share a little bit of my novel with you...

From the beginning:

No one ever tells you what divorce is like. There are no fairy tales or animated fantasies about divorce. Little girls don’t grow up with visions of divorce in their head, they don’t dream about it like marriage and weddings. Prince Charming never leaves you for a big-beautiful-blonde-bitch who’s younger than you and pregnant with his child in Disney movies. There aren’t newsstands full of magazines devoted specifically to the ‘outfit’ you’ll be wearing on your special day in divorce court. No one tells you how slimy divorce lawyers are or how many thousands of dollars it costs to get divorced. No one tells you how heavy and hard that seven-letter word--divorce is to live. Self help books, a therapist, friends and family, none of them quite understood what I was feeling. I didn’t even know how to describe it until I sat in a movie theater alone late one Friday night watching Under the Tuscan Sun and screenwriter Audrey Wells defined the unexplainable. Diane Lane looked at me with her tear stained face, cracking voice and spoke Audrey Wells’ words: “Do you know what the most suprising thing about divorce is? -It doesn't actually kill you, like a bullet to the heart, or a head-on car wreck. It should. When… someone you've promised to cherish… "'til death do you part"… says they never loved you… it should kill you instantly. You shouldn't have to wake up day after day after that trying to understand how in the world you didn't know.” “Holy shit! At last, someone understands.” I said out loud in a darkened theater, not caring if the couples on dates cuddling together heard. This was a great epiphany.  posted by Matildakay at 11:13 PM