#FreewriteMadness Update: I'm Turning Emma and Sarah into Sisters

Today, I want to try out a new idea that occurred to me earlier: an idea that could fix the enormous, gaping plot hole that has emerged with regard to the Sarah storyline and the Emma/Derek/Sophie storyline wildly diverging from one another. In an earlier post, I surmised that I would probably need to separate my #FreewriteMadness / #NaNoWriMo novel into two completely different books, because aside from the dramatic events of Chapter One, Sarah seemed to have evolved into an entirely separate entity. Her story has had absolutely nothing to do with Emma's or Derek's.

However, as I was musing over this problem earlier, it occurred to me that there a whole lot of similarities between the backstories of both Emma and Sarah. In my 'Me Too' post last week, I wrote Lynette (Sarah's mother) as a sympathetic, supportive character because from the beginning, I had a strong sense that Sarah had an older female relative in her life who served as a great source of comfort and understanding for her. In that post, I also stated that Lynette had experienced a pregnancy at a young age (at the time, I imagined that Sarah had been the result of this pregnancy). It just felt like something that was relevant to her character in that particular moment.

From the earliest days of this whole project, I have known that Emma became pregnant with her son at a young age too. This has been a big part of her backstory for me: the fact that she fell for her ex-husband Frank while she was a young student in college, and became pregnant at the age of twenty-one. She and Frank rushed into marriage as a result – from 1983, all the way up until earlier this year, abortion was strictly outlawed by the Irish Constitution, and I knew that Emma had very conservative, staunchly Catholic parents who would have highly disapproved of her giving birth to a child out of wedlock.

I envisaged Sarah having a conservative older relative as well: an aunt named Joanne, who said many upsetting things to her once she learned that her new boyfriend, Mark, was bisexual.

Given all of these similarities that I ended up putting into their backstories – without even realising that I was doing so – I've ended up thinking: why couldn't Emma and Sarah be sisters? I have imagined Sarah being twenty-four years of age, while Emma is around thirty-six or thirty-seven. This sort of age gap between two sisters is one that I'm already well-acquainted with: I'm twenty-eight years of age, but my little sister will turn sixteen at the start of December. There is a wide gap between us in terms of our life experience (as we get older, of course, that twelve-year difference in our ages will become less significant), but I am very close to her and I love her with all of my heart.

Needless to say, I always set a great example for her by being the epitome of maturity and decorum when she's around.

So, Emma will now replace Lynnette as the older female figure in Sarah's life – the one whose 'mistake' of becoming pregnant at a young age hung over Sarah's adolescence and added to her great fear of sex, as I briefly discussed in the post last week – the one who is fiercely protective of Sarah and tries to shield her from the harsh words of other people in the family. I know this will mean I have to go back and edit a lot of the stuff I've written so far. I'm not going to do that right now, as NaNoWriMo is strictly about getting words down on the page, not fussing over whether it all looks perfect. I can do all of the necessary editing during ..... Editember? Decembredit? Decedit? Could any of those become a thing? I don't know...

Anyway. Enough of my rambling. I'll start writing, see if the sisters idea feels better than Sarah just being Emma's employee, and stick with it from now on if it feels right. Sarah could still work in Emma's store: one aspect of Sarah's story is that she is struggling to establish herself in the adult world after graduating from a film studies degree, so I can easily see Emma offering to help her out in that sense, by offering her a job. Turning the two of them into sisters could be a really simple, effective way of connecting the two storylines so that Sarah doesn't feel like a loose cannon roving about all on her own, without any real connection to the other main characters.

This also feels like a good way to convey Emma's great tenderness and her protective instinct: qualities I've always known she possessed, but haven't fully expressed in anything I've written so far. I've written plenty of scenes where she is upset, anxious, stressed, etc ... but her sense of humour and her kind heart haven't received nearly enough attention. A big sister/significantly younger sister dynamic feels like a great way to focus on teasing out those aspects of Emma's personality. It's also a dynamic I'm intimately familiar with in my own life: being so much older than my own baby sister (though I don't yet know what form that relationship will take when I'm in my late thirties and she's in her early twenties – that's still a decade away, so I'll just have to try and imagine it).

I did say a couple of paragraphs ago that I'd stop rambling, didn't I? Whoops. Best laid plans of mice and men and all that...

I wasn't always like this: my thoughts flowing so effortlessly onto the page or keyboard before me. I blame @freewritehouse ENTIRELY for this shocking state of affairs. It's all their fault. 😉 I used to be painfully slow and self-conscious when writing – taking forever to compose a single paragraph, cringing about it every step of the way, obsessively checking for errors – before they came along with their five-minute freewrite challenges: encouraging us all to simply let loose and write from our hearts, putting down whatever felt right to us in any given moment, without giving in to fear, judgement, self-criticism or any of the other crushing burdens that weigh us down when we're desperately trying to make our work feel good enough. How very dare they. People who don't like my rambles should totally take it up with them. 😁❤️

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Sarah is stacking tins of beans and tomatoes – meticulously ensuring that everything is lined up correctly and looks aesthetically pleasing – when Emma pokes her head around the corner.

'Sarah? It's lunch time,' her sister announces, then grins and begins to chivvy her down the aisle, in the direction of the staff kitchen. 'We're taking a break, come on...'

'But I was in the middle of perfecting my stacking game,' Sarah protests. 'I had all the labels facing in the right direction. It always annoys me when Stefan has them the wrong way around ... how are customers meant to be able to see what they are?'

'I know, I know ... but in the midst of this glorious quest for perfection, did you check the stock in aisle six?'

'Oh, um ... I will. After lunch...'

Emma shakes her head and tuts as they enter the kitchen. 'Of course you didn't.'

'I'm sorry, I forgot.'

'Not good enough! I'll have to disown you from this day forward.' Emma winks at her as she begins to fill the kettle. 'Tea?'

'Please. With two sugars.'

'I know.'

'Mam said I should cut back on sugar last time I was speaking to her. Went on this big lecture about how unhealthy it was...'

'She doesn't approve of a lot of things,' Emma remarks wryly, now opening the fridge to pull out her lunch. 'Did I tell you about the way she went on and on about Brian's clothes last time we visited? I managed to stop her from saying it to his face, thankfully.'

'Yeah...' Sarah chews her lip a little nervously, watching Emma put the tea things together. 'Emma ... how is Brian these days? Is he okay?'

Emma stops bustling around. Her back has tensed up. 'He .... he's getting there.' She turns to face Sarah, her brow furrowed. 'We've been fighting less, anyway, so I'm taking that as a good thing.

'His heart is in the right place, Em,' Sarah says softly. 'Anyone can see that. I'm sure a lot of the attitude he has right now is just ... you know, teenage stuff.'

'Mm. But when will the teenage stuff end? That's what I want to know!'

Emma is trying to smile – trying to make a joke out of it – but Sarah can see that it's a struggle for her. 'Oh, Em...'

She gets up to hug her and they stand still for a few moments, lapsing into a silence punctuated only by the vague sounds of shoppers in the supermarket beyond them.

'Listen, I'll make the tea,' Sarah insists. 'You sit down and have your lunch.'

'Are you sure?'

'It's no problem at all,' Sarah assures her, already reaching for the kettle. 'One sugar and a drop of milk, right?'

'Yes. Thank you.' Emma peers at the milk carton as Sarah pours it out. 'I wonder if Brian will end up going vegan. He's vegetarian right now – and very passionate about it – so I feel like it's only a matter of time.'

'How long has he been vegetarian now?'

'A couple of months, I think. The house is filled with his damn chickpeas and lentils and God knows what else – oh, thanks for that,' she says, as Sarah hands her the mug of tea. 'This whole thing is a bit of a learning curve for me, but he's been teaching me how to prepare them properly ... he's turning out to be quite a good chef, I must say. Made this gorgeous lasagne the other day. What a treat it was for me to come home and realise I didn't have to cook!'

Sarah beams as she sits down opposite Emma, clutching her own mug of tea. 'Aw, that was sweet of him.'

'I'm just glad he's taking an interest in something. For so long, he's been so listless, so disinterested in everything ... well. You know how he's been. It was awful.'

'Mm...'

They sit in silence for a while – just eating their lunch – before Emma begins to speak again, her voice thoughtful.

‘He's always been like that, though: mad about animals. Remember poor Dolly?'

'Oh yeah ... Brian was so upset when she passed, I've never seen anything like it...'

'He was, but I’ll always remember one incident that happened when he was about six or seven. She killed a bird – brought it right up to the door – and he was very angry and wouldn’t cuddle her for days. Of course, poor Dolly was very confused. She was a cat – she'd only done what came naturally to her – but Brian didn’t understand that. All he saw was her destroying that poor bird, and he got very upset. Oh God, he was raging…’ She can’t help but chuckle at the memory. ‘Now that I think about it, I suppose it’s no surprise that he’s gone vegetarian.’

‘Would you consider getting a pet now?’ Sarah asks. ‘Maybe it would help him.’

Emma’s brow furrows as she considers this. ‘Well … I don’t know. Maybe. He’d have to be the one to look after it, though. I certainly have no intention of cleaning up pee and shit all day long. As if I don’t have enough to be doing…’ She laughs, but Sarah detects a faint trace of anxiety in her voice. She hasn't been sure about bringing up this subject – it could be a touchy one – but she has sensed her sister's fear for the supermarket on a number of occasions...

'Is the business doing okay, Em?'

Emma pauses in the midst of eating her yoghurt. Sarah notes the frown on her face. 'It's ... well, it's doing okay,' she says slowly. 'Yes, there are a few issues going on here and there, but nothing catastrophic. Don't worry.'

She smiles at Sarah, who isn't entirely sure whether or not to believe her. But she decides not to press the issue.

'Anyway. How are things going with this Mark guy of yours?' Emma asks, clearly eager to move on swiftly. 'I want to hear all the gossip,' she adds mischievously, with one eyebrow raised. 'You know me!'

Sarah smiles, now blushing slightly. 'He's really sweet, Em. I can't wait for you to meet him.'

'So you keep saying ... and yet, to this day, have I met him? No. No, I have not.'

'You will, I swear! I'm just nervous about suggesting it ... I wonder if it's too soon to be doing the whole family-introductions thing.'

'Hmm. Like I said earlier: not good enough! I hope you realise that if he doesn't receive the big-sis seal of approval soon, you can't carry on seeing him.'

Sarah giggles. 'Yeah, yeah, I know.'

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Image Sources
The gingerbread sisters: Hooked on Ornaments
Regina George GIF: Giphy
Women drinking tea/coffee: ThoughtCo

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That gives me 1158 words ... and yes, the 'sisters who happen to work together' thing feels so much better to me than a boss/employee relationship.

I want to end this post by giving a shout out to everyone else who has signed up to the fit of absolute lunacy invigorating creative challenge that is #FreewriteMadness. 😇 Make sure you go and support their work too! I have limited voting power (damn my not-quite-plankton but not-quite-redfish status 😉), but will upvote as many posts as I can per day.

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