Monday Writing: Sharing The Sister Story

Project: sister story

Status: edit round finished!!

A Little Scene

I'm breathing a bit of a sigh of relief today because I finished the latest edit round of the sister story. There are more edit rounds to come later, but for now I'm finished with this story and moving on to editing/rewriting something else. Today I'm thinking I'll share just a little bit of the sister story with you guys because I feel like I've been talking about it a lot and I'm really, really private and protective of my writing. This book is told from two different perspectives, Zooey and Piper: at this point I've written five drafts of Zooey's story and three drafts of Piper's. I still haven't let any beta-readers read the book yet, and I'm still not ready to. 

But I am so excited about this book. I love it so much. And I want to share at least part of what I've written right now. It's just a tiny scene. Not even a scene really, but just a few paragraphs of internal monologue. This is from the POV of Piper, the older sister, who has just kissed her ex-boyfriend (who has a current girlfriend). Like I said, this is a really short scene but I love it because it encapsulates so much of what this story is about (especially Piper's half of the book) - Piper and her ex-boyfriend, Piper and Zooey (and how she views Zooey), and Piper's issues with herself.

After the party, it's impossible to sleep. There's this restless, crazy bubble of energy inside of me. I roll over onto my side and stare at Zooey, breathing calmly as she sleeps on her bed. I will her to wake up, but she doesn't. And I'm bursting, bursting, bursting with the news of what happened. That kiss. That look he gave me after the kiss. The feelings that just won't go away.

There's a part of me that wants to wake Zooey up and tell her.


There's another part of me -- a bigger part -- that knows telling her will only result in reality getting in the way of my fantasy. Because Zooey is good. From the top of her hair down to the very soles of her shoes, there's not a mean or bitchy or selfish bone in her body. And what I did is selfish. And mean. It makes me horrible, I know, but somehow as long as Zooey doesn't know, I can ignore that part of it. I can ignore that what happened was wrong.


So I let her sleep and I keep my secret close to me.