This is the first installment of Naked Editing, my effort to show what the writing process is for an author (namely me) who works mostly as a pantser – that is, without an outline of the story before I begin writing.

The current ms I’m working on is the result of a decision I made about wanting to write more middle-aged women characters, not necessarily as cozies (which is where most middle-aged women characters get relegated).

I started with the idea that I wanted to write another story about a witch but different in tone and intention from The Mage of Motor Avenue.

Despite pondering, I had no idea how to get inside this story until one day, when I’m walking down the street on my way to the coffee shop, I start feeling a sparking sensation on my skin, as if a tiny ash from a fire has landed on my hand.

It hasn’t but that’s what it feels like. It’s very strange, and I decide it will be the same sensation my main character has, that is the start of all this (“all this” being the story, whatever the story is. At Week 1, I still don’t know).

The spark, I decide, is going to be the magic starting to come out. That connects with an idea I’ve been having about older women (after the age of menopause) having a realistic view of the kind of world we’re living in and a do-not-give-a-shit mindset that goes with it. It’s kind of like having a superpower. And making “being middle-aged” an explicit magical ability could be kind of fun.

I start writing and realize that a great way to show the main character’s realistic view of the world is to start having her see things that she didn’t see before – in this case, fairy tale creatures. They’ve always been there but she didn’t know it. So that’s what happens here.

The * in the ms below refers to a timeline problem problem that emerged as I continued writing; later, it turns out that the primary election has already been held and in California, that’s not until June. In revision, I’ll have to correct that. There will be a lot more of those inconsistencies as the story develops.

There are also undoubtedly typos and other such errors, but in a first draft I don’t worry about issues like that.

Here’s the first installment:

I was walking east down Palms Boulevard on an early May* afternoon when the first spark landed on my arm.

I brushed it away, expecting to feel the warmth of an ash from someone’s cigarette or a wildfire I hadn’t yet heard about, carried to me on the breeze. But there was no such warmth against my fingers.

When the second spark fell, I realized it wasn’t on my skin, it was under my skin, a thing happening beneath my flesh, and as I stood at the light, waiting for the walk signal, I pulled out my phone and Googled my symptoms.

Then I put my phone away and crossed the street. It was probably menopause. At the moment, everything was menopause and frankly menopause could go fuck itself.

Then I saw the shadow.

At first I assumed it was someone taking a shortcut to their parking spot in the alley. Then it turned, as if aware of my observation, and it folded a leathery wing closer to its body with a creaking, rustling sound. It met my gaze with red, piercing eyes. A drift of rank, fetid odor reached my nose just as I rocked back a step.

I closed my eyes, shook my head, and grabbed my phone from my pocket to see if IMAX-level hallucinations were a common symptom of menopause. I did not look down the alley again, but kept my focus on my phone, and the sidewalk ahead of me.

By the time I reached the Coffee Commissary on Motor Avenue, I’d convinced myself that I’d bene mistaken in what I’d seen; hallucinations were one of the few health problems not associated with menopause and I didn’t want to be having a psychotic breakdown or something.

“Or maybe it was someone dressed for an audition,” Dahlia said, when I told her. She was drinking some kind of pink beverage over ice, probably some kind of tea with a flower in it, like hibiscus or peony. Though did anyone make a peony blossom drink? I was not the one who would know.

“Wouldn’t that be taking the audition a little far?” I asked. “Sure, wear a deerstalker hat if you’re up for Sherlock Holmes, but a full body costume? Including contracts? And rolling in a urine-soaked alley to get the stench right?”

Dahlia wrinkled her nose. “Maybe he’s a method actor.”

Dahlia is about twelve years younger than I am, a broad solid woman who wore her curly hair short and tight against her skull. She was partial to loose cotton pants and blouses in earth tones. Today she was wearing the big round glasses with lavender frames. She has seven or eight pairs to suit her whims.

I’m of a similar shape but an earlier vintage. I wear jeans and T-shirts because I don’t go to an office and I no longer have the kind of ass that looks good in athleisure. Truth be told I’m not sure anyone does.

My hair is longer and straighter, mostly silver, which sometimes I color and sometimes I don’t, depending on how tired I am of shelling out three hundred bucks a month just so I wouldn’t be mistaken for an eighty-year-old. This is how it works in LA: if you have silver hair, you must be at least eighty years old. In LA no one ages gracefully and if you’re showing signs of it the assumption is you must be very old indeed.

“I suppose he might—” I paused, cup of hot black tea poised near my lips. “I got the distinct impression that it was a woman, now that I think about it.”

“Like, they had breasts?”

I could feel my brows draw together, and I made myself stop, smoothing my forehead with my fingers. It was too late to stop the wrinkles I already had but I could still do something about those yet to come.

“I don’t remember breasts, exactly,” I said. “I think it was her face, something about her face. Maybe the curve of her cheek, or her throat. No Adam’s apple.”

I took a sip of tea, then added, “Of course, since I was probably completely mistaken about what I saw, I’m probably wrong about gender, too.”

“Still voting for method actor,” Dahlia said, unzipping her backpack and digging her laptop out. She works in business operations for a casting agency, which, like most businesses in LA, or at least on the Westside of LA, didn’t expect employees to actually work in an office or at least not for an entire day at a time.

Dahlia and I met once or twice a week to work and gossip, both of us transplants from colder climes—she was New York City and I was a small Midwestern town you’ve never heard of unless you’re a college basketball fan. We’d each been in LA for about ten years. I’d come for a job and stayed for the sun.

I unsnapped my messenger bag, dug out my own laptop, and said, “How’d your date go?”

She rolled her eyes and I planted my elbows on the table to listen to her tale of woe.

~~~

Jennifer Lawler has been a writer-editor for more than twenty-five years and has published more than forty novels and nonfiction books. She is the founder of the online education company Club Ed LLC