My original intention for No Sugar Coating was to make it into a light and fluffy book. One that you could pick up, read in an afternoon, and put down feeling happy/emotionally satisfied. After outlining and writing the first few chapters, I realized it was the opposite. While you can, and should, fall in love with Hailey, her story is atrociously depressing at times.
It's her character that makes her so interesting to write. She has moments of teen angst, where she's disgruntled with the world. But most of her moments consist of this strange acceptance of the universe as it currently stands. Hailey's voice tends to be sincere and poignant, which is why it has been so fun to develop her character.
It ranges from the ridiculousness below:
I glanced around my room, and not having anything better to do for ten minutes, I opened up my book for English. I swear, if I had to read one more depressing poem about the tragedies of mortality, I was going to force myself to barf all over this book and tell my teacher that my dog did it.
I didn't have a dog, but I figured the puke filled pages would be proof in themselves.
To something a bit more meaningful:
I found the concept funny. It was amusing that normal people, people without my "problem," would fret over something as undeniably true as the past.
I fell in love with Hailey because she has so many layers. She wants that first high school love and simple things that the rest of us take for granted. I think her "problem" only adds to her voice.
I've written 24,000 words so far with an original goal of 45,000 (to self-publish as a novella). But the more time I spend writing Hailey's story, the longer I want it to be. Considering I just finished Part 2 out of 5, I doubt her story will fit inside the 45k words anymore. I hope to finish her story by the end of this month.
While I want instant gratification (share Hailey with all the readers!), I will wait until the book is fully edited and actually done properly. I refuse to sentence readers to reading a book littered with grammatical errors and typos.
