Straight No Chaser

In Vitro Fertilization

hi everyone. i've been terrible; i know. first it was christmas break and i didn't touch the computer almost the entire time; now i'm back in atlanta and have had a week so profoundly horrible i didn't even consider trying to dredge up the wherewithal to write anything, much less update a journal that still somehow lacks the mark of my personality.

suffice it to say, i'm frustrated with myself and my age group; i'm tired of being not-quite-twenty and hence pretty much discouraged from expressing any advanced depth of feeling; i have a sore throat and i want to go home.

i'll come back to that, though. in the meantime i promised myself i would dedicate an entry to sidnee and alan, my two favorite characters of my own creation. i'm so sorry, but this warrants a plug; you can find them here:

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okay, so: at fifteen years old, shannon is becoming bitterly acquainted with the dismal fact that the world controls her, not the other way around. around her, peers find some measure of control in academics, extracurriculars and eating disorders; she dabbles in each but is still unsatisfied.

she eventually drops the perpetual diet but remains a nerd, and starts carrying an empty black spiral notebook everywhere she goes. often she comes close to actually writing in it, but can't make herself mar its pristine blankness. by the time she finally does set pen to paper, the sacred object has become dogeared and battered around the edges.

the story of sidnee and alan comes out in a rush; it is born of her contempt for youthful infatuation, and her yen for a deeper connection. characteristically, sidnee (loosely) embodies shannon's projection of her adult self, though they are in many ways situationally different. alan, meanwhile, is the personification of a fifteen-year-old's concept of masculine perfection.

the story flows along predictable lines and is, plot-wise, a backdrop to a series of romantic tableaus. the baby is a necessity; at this point in her development, all shannon's stories have pregnant characters (admittedly, not much has changed there). there's a happy ending, but wait! two years later she revisits the cassidys, and casts them into another set of conflicts not unlike the first. again, though, there is peace in the valley, and for the first time ever, shannon has actually finished something she's begun, a miracle in its own right.

then, of course, it's the first thing i ever dared post on my writing.com account, and since then the feedback and support of readers have become integral parts of the story itself. yet another reason i love this site.