Feeling Bereft

I feel bereft. Since December 2012 I’ve been working on my story, Samantha and yesterday (20 February) I completed the manuscript. For several months Samantha and the other people in my book have been my more or less constant companions. While walking to the station to take the train into work my mind has been busy thinking about the storyline and rehearsing dialogues. Suddenly all that is over, ends have been tied up and the story put to bed.

 

Since December the actors in Samantha have become real to me, they have lived in my brain and become part of my life. At a fundamental level I know that the persons in Samantha are mere figments of my imagination, however to write convincingly one must believe in the people you create, they do at some level take on a life of their own. When Sam is abused by her brutal pimp it is a mere will of the wisp, a nothing which suffers. Sam does however represent those who are forced into the sex industry against their will and, as such she is real. Her pain represents the suffering of actual sex workers who have been compelled to become prostitutes so, at another level Sam does, most definitely exist.

 

I said at the start of this post that Samantha has been completed. This is not quite correct. While Samantha exists in draft form on my blog (http://newauthoronline.com/2013/02/20/samantha-part-16/), It is my intention to edit the book with the view to publishing my manuscript as an ebook. During this process changes will be made although the fundamentals of the story will remain the same.