I thought it might be fun to write a post discussing the development progress of the new project I started last week. It is fitting in well with issues I need to focus on for revising Isarina, since it is a much less complicated project.
This project is heavily autobiographical, and my therapist has said that some of it fits into a technique she uses with clients. In Laura's world, she has a hard time dealing with Stella's rejection and not having emotional bandwidth to figure it out because she has the burden of finding out her mother is terminally ill, and this was something I do not think I was ready to write about. It felt authentic to add this to the character profile of my Main Character, Laura, but once I got to the point of having to write the scene where she goes in to tell her parents that she's not engaged while facing the fact that her mother was dying was horrible.
However, let's focus on the fun bits as this project evolves! First are our ladies who have been together for two years, and lots of fun flashbacks about how great they were together, and why all of their friends saw that. Laura is a 32 Operational Manager at a Financial Advisory firm. She has a misogynistic CEO Bill, and a possibly lesbian older divorced woman VP Cynthia who tries to fight for her and help her cope. However, because of her family drama, she is not in a place to feel confident about interviewing for new positions, despite recruiters trying to offer her positions making twice as much as she is making there. She started running with her father and went on to compete in a Division I athletic program in college. She is tall and curvy with dark curly hair and is a member of the Atlanta Track Club. Laura is involved in a young women mentoring program at the Refugee center and spends time with Mimi, a teenage daughter of a Malaysian Refugee family, to help her acclimate to society in the States and learning life skills her parents are less familiar with in a foreign environment.
She met Stella on Match.com after a string of bad dates and hit it off immediately. Her friend Becky is in residency, and providing medical support for what to expect with her mother's illness. Things get interesting and confusing when Laura becomes single there. Becky is a petite blond with a background as a dancer with many ties to the LGBT community. Laura is involved with many young professional circles. She and Becky met Darius one night while out, and that led to a friendship with both Darius and his younger sister, Patricia. Darius has a website for dating and relationship advice, which he does for free, and becomes like an older brother to Laura. He dispenses dating and relationship advice for relationships of any gender, and was who Laura consulted when meeting Stella for their first date.
Patricia is a 31 year old accountant and body builder with a storied past which she confides in Laura, but finally meets Rico after a string of less than guys who are less than. Rico commits immediately, catching her off gaurd. Rico is a 34 year old IT consultant from South America who came to Atlanta for college and stayed. Trish and Rico know Stella and Laura as a couple fairly well, and are there for Laura when things fall apart.
Stella is a tall slender natural blond 29 year old volleyball player. She competed in a D III program in college, but secured one of the few scholarships available. She enjoys learning the edrums and reading self-improvment books. She is from Wilmington where her father is a minister, and she moved to Atlanta for a job with a sports marketing firm, where she has an entry level position but advances to a promotion in management with support from Laura. Stella is the neat-freak of the couple, and is a Leo who likes attention. Her dislikes are messiness and people she considers rude or abrasive. Stella is part of a casual volleyball league and prefers the safety of lesbian and LGBT friendly environments.
As a couple, Laura and Stella join pick up ultimate frisbee group that meets a few times a week and adopt an Austrailian Shepherd rescue named Misty. They share a common foundation of their relationship in shared belief systems.
Most of the characters have been fairly easy to write, except for Stella's. The POV is on Laura, so it felt a little like I wasn't getting to show Stella's perspective as much, since many of the scenes are heavily skewed by how Laura is viewing them. However, that is true to life since when we are in the middle of a breakup, that is the lense through which we tend to see things. In my revision, I need to create more characterization for one of the female characters, also. I think working on Stella's voice and perspective shining through more in this more simple real world environment might help develop the skills I need for the revisions in the more complex world.
Getting to know these characters has been really fun. They are becoming special the more details are filled out. Drawing on breakup experiences is, I think, universal. There seems to be a lot of progress in YA with stories about sapphic couples, but fewer examples in the adult spectrum. Considering the presence in film and TV, I find this suprising that publishing seems to be behind in this area. What is important with creating this story were that both women are single and neither of their arcs involve any question about their sexual identities. Their families both represent loving and supportive families. I do address issues of Bisexual erasure when Laura becomes single again and talking to people about her dating life who try to define her according to a black and white identity structure with regards to her dating preferences.
If other writers feel inspired by these themes to contribute more stories along these lines, and see the kinds of normal characters that we can write about, I would love to see more!
UPDATE! I have made a collage for this book and attached it below.
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