Stories just have a way of doing that, sometimes. There are still four women, three of them are 49 and one of them is turning 50. But the 50 year old has a secret she’s never told anyone that is the reason for her seeming invulnerability. One of the others needs to see an old flame before she can move on with her life, one of them has a husband who is having an affair with another man, and one of them has a stalker. Some of this might have taken root in my original plot but stories, like lives, take off in directions you never see coming. One of my characters was supposed to be a kindergarten teacher but she just didn’t want to be. She wanted to be a hair stylist. Nothing I could do to stop her.  So, I’m into the story. I will probably start posting chapters here for your perusal and suggestions soon.

In the meantime, I tried a collaboration. I have a writing buddy (I may have mentioned him before), and we help each other out with our writing, offering suggestions for ways to tighten up the writing, make it more interesting, more realistic, etc. So I suggested we try to write something together. It was interesting and educational, but both of us are glad it’s over and I don’t think we’ll try that again. I have discovered I can’t create an aimless, shiftless character without any redeeming qualities. At least not yet. Maybe I should try. Maybe I will try. Someday. And I don’t mind when my characters take me to places that surprise me, but when my character is interacting with someone else’s character, I don’t do that well. I get protective of my character. It was definitely a learning experience; I hope it was that for him, too.

It’s a hot summer and the sun feels very different to me than it did forty, fifty and sixty years ago. It feels hostile. It feels like it plans to burn the planet up to get even with us for not being good stewards of the gift we were given–life on this diverse, glorious world. Fanciful thinking? Probably. Still . . .

I want to write a girlfriend story that is authentically how women relate to one another. I recently watched “Wine Country” the movie. It’s got great people in it, and I was looking forward to it, but it missed the mark. It either tried too hard, or it realized half-way through that nothing had happened and they needed to make something happen and then the something that happened was off kilter or … I’m not sure. It just stopped being authentic. So I want to try my hand at it. I’ve got five women in their early fifties or maybe late forties. They were part of a girl’s band in high school, and they stayed friends. There are combinations that see each other more often than others, but they all care about each other. All of them have endured sadness and awful things have happened to at least four of them, but they are all resilient and have spunk. Now, I need a reason for them to have decided they need a long weekend getaway. Here are some examples of reasons, so you can pick one of these or you can come up with your own, if you like.

1. One of them is getting a much needed divorce from a philanderer.
2. One of them quit her job to spend a year writing a screenplay about a girlfriend weekend.
3. A husband left one of them for an older woman/another man/a transgender person.
4. After a long time single, one of them is getting re-married to a man none of the girlfriends like.