A Fresh Start

It wasn’t the first one she had started. Grace had started writing her first novel when she was sixteen years old – an entire dozen years ago. Of course, it hadn’t been very good. She had been the protagonist, and she’d mostly written all kinds of fantasies. But it had made her realize that she wanted to write. It had also taught her a lot about what not to do.

Her second attempt had been better. She had turned down all practical advice and got herself a BA in Literature. Grace had always loved reading. Being given a degree for reading – it was the dream. Then she had listened to common sense and did a diploma course in publishing and editing, making herself employable just in time for the Kindle boom.

But employable in that context meant that she had to spend her working hours reading very bad books written by people who clearly hadn’t realized that trashing the first book you ever write is probably a very good idea.

Everybody thought they were a writer, thought Grace, unable to settle down. She wanted to go back to the book, not the one she was writing. But without giving her precious document half an hour, she couldn’t do it. Alan Barden’s latest mystery would be her reward.

Knowing it was probably a bad idea when she was so irritated, she called her mama.

“Gracie, how’s the pasta salad?”

Grace grinned, feeling her irritation and annoyance leaking away. Her mama knew.

“It’s wonderful, Mama. Mine never turns out this well. How was your day? How’s the volunteering going?”

Her mama, Violet Hickory, was a formidable woman. She had found herself penniless and on welfare when she was pregnant with Grace, alone in the world. She had never forgotten the humiliation of having to eat at a soup kitchen, or the kindness of the people who had never seen it as charity but as helping.

Violet had worked, and worked very hard, to get something better from her life. She had worked two jobs and then gone to night school for a business degree when Grace was in school. Grace had wanted to help, of course, and take part time jobs. But Violet had never let her cut a single class. Grace’s education, Violet had insisted, was the most important thing in their lives.

Armed with her degree, she had finally got a job that meant a desk job, instead of being on her feet all day. Her intelligence and tenacity had meant the difference between financial security and the soup kitchen. Violet had done everything right, and nothing had been handed to her.

But through all of those times, the close bond between Grace and Violet had never wavered. Violet had been just seventeen when she’d had Grace. Grace couldn’t even imagine how difficult it must’ve been. But she had done it.

When she published her very first book, it would be dedicated to her mama. Grace had never questioned that. It had always been a given.

That she would publish, too, had always been a given. Violet had encouraged her to major in Literature even when everybody else told her to do something much more practical. Violet had even made sure that she had a very little student loan to pay back.

Violet had been supportive of her, always. But lately, Grace had begun to feel as if she were letting her mama down. The whole point of the job in a publishing firm, to be honest, had been to get a foot in the door. She’d been willing to go through hundreds of bad manuscripts if it meant that she could get her own manuscript read – by somebody with the power to turn it into everything it could be.

She wanted it read by Andrea Darcy, the woman who had a knack for finding the most promising of drafts and polishing them up into bestsellers.

But Andrea didn’t take new clients anymore. And now that Grace knew what editors were usually like, she didn’t want to take a chance and give her manuscript – her precious draft – to anybody else.

“It’s going fine, baby. I’m on my way to the soup kitchen. Are you sure you can’t come?”

Grace felt a short, sharp pang of guilt. She hadn’t gone in about a month. It was a long time. Violet went every week, without fail. Excuses were just that, in her book.

“Next week, for sure, Mama. I promise.”

“It’s not to keep any promises to me, Gracie. It’s to give back because we were helped, generously, by good people. Now it’s our turn.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“My dear girl, you must be tired and busy, or you would come. I know. You haven’t put your half an hour in yet, have you?”

Grace smiled.

“No, not yet. I had to stay late at work because I got stuck doing this most horrible book. Mama, it’s by the boss’s wife’s little sister so I can’t even junk it, but Lord! I don’t think I’ve ever read anything so terrible!”

“Oh, it can’t be that bad.”

Violet, despite the hard knocks life had given her, was an optimist. She’d once told Grace that if she hadn’t believed that something good was around the corner, she would just have stopped going on. That had made Grace realize that the unshakeable optimism was her shield and her defense.

But in this instance, she was wrong.

“Mama, there are sparkling werewolves and rainbow unicorns in it.”

Violet paused for a second. Grace could close her eyes and imagine her trying to find something nice to say about it.

“Maybe it’s meant to be funny.”

“I only wish so, mama. It’s deadly serious. She’s tried to make an epic out of it. It’s… Well, even bronies wouldn’t read this, not even if I put My Little Ponies in it.”

Grace had explained bronies to Violet a few weeks ago. It had taken a while.

“Well then, I suppose you just have to get on with it and give yourself a nice reward for having done it.”

“That’s what I did, but I rewarded myself for every chapter and it took a lot longer than I thought. Mama, you must try the new Alan Barden book. I’ll give you my copy once I’m done. It’s incredible.”

Grace heard Violet sigh. Violet had listened to Grace rhapsodize over Alan Barden quite a few times and had no intention of being caught doing that again.

“I’m sure it is, my dear, but I have to go. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Come here for dinner if you’ve run out of food.”

Grace smiled and said goodbye.

Talking to Violet had made her settle down a bit. She finished her pasta salad and opened the word document that contained her masterpiece.

Grace had a nagging feeling that she had done the best she could without help. She’d resisted the idea of a beta reader. She didn’t want somebody to screw it up.

Still, half an hour was half an hour. She got to work, and was soon lost in the world she had created and so desperately wanted to share with everybody.