Samples from the draft of my first novel.

[Si-Amber]

OK, so this year I am following my dreams to be an author, and yesterday I began the rough draft of my first novel. I'm basically free-writing the rough draft and then I'll go back afterwards to edit and do re-writes. At the moment it has the working title of "Free", an here is what I have done so far.....

Chapter One

When I look back to the night where this story begins, I still to this day do not know where that sudden rebelliousness came from. I guess it was the fact that I could rebel with little risk of being caught out. A rare moment, in my life at that point, where I was free from the restrictions that my mother put on me.
I was nineteen. For most of my friends going out to a pub on a Friday night was a weekly event and had been since the moment they turned eighteen, if not earlier. For me this was my first time. As I prepared to go out that night, I had no idea of how much such a simple rite of passage would change my life.
I suppose I should introduce myself. My name is Romy Sadler. Romy is short for Rosemary. I was named after my late great-grandmother. I had lived in the small town of Haynesdon for all of my life, in the two-bedroom house. For the first seventeen years of my life, there was the three of us, my mother, my father and me. We were happy, or so I thought, right up until the moment when it was discovered that my father, a milkman, had been having an affair with one of the female customers on his round. I know right? What a cliché! Pretty soon after that, my father moved in with the woman, Gloria, and for quite a while I had very little to do with him.
Mum had always been over-protective of me. That was just the way she was. She was a born worrier and believed that behind every corner was someone or something, waiting to do me harm. Dad is the opposite, so laid back that he is almost falling over. So when I was at school and he still lived at home there would be times where he would cover for me so that I could go out and meet up with my friends in the park. All that changed when he left the house. My distraught, betrayed mother was more determined than ever to wrap me up in cotton wool. To keep me with her. I was seventeen years old. My friends were going out, getting boyfriends and doing the things that people do when they get boyfriends. I had a curfew of 7pm, even at weekends. When I was out, Mum would be on the phone every half an hour, to find out where I was and who I was with. As you can imagine, my social life suffered as I failed to keep up with my peer group. I had never been massively popular, but I did have a small group of close friends, who were moving on in life, going places, having new experiences. I was being left behind.
When I turned eighteen and became an adult in the eyes of the law, I had hoped that things might have changed, but the same rules applied, even when I finished college and got a part-time job in a shoe shop on the high street. I would get home from work at around 6pm, with little possibility of doing anything social after that. A prisoner in my own home. Life sucked.
And so, at the age of nineteen, came the weekend that I was left at home alone, to look after myself, for the very first time in my life. My grandfather had taken a fall and so Mum had to rush off up to Nottingham to make sure that he and Grandma were alright. She desperately wanted to take me with her, but she knew that my manager, Linda (who just happened to be a friend of my mother. Yes, even at work Mum could keep an eye on me!) would not be able to spare me on the Saturday. She was left with no choice, but to regretfully leave me behind, after obviously asking half the neighbours to keep an eye on me and demanding I promise not to invite anybody over to the house and not to open the door to anyone that I didn’t know (presumably in case there were rapists and murderers watching the house, just waiting for me to left alone).
If it hadn’t have been for my friends, I think I probably would have just stayed at home that night, watched television, read a book , counted down the minutes until bedtime. My girls weren’t going to let that happen though. For the last couple of years, they had encouraged me every week to tell my mother that I was a young woman now and was going out whether she liked it or not. Occasionally, in moments of frustration I would try that. The response was the same every time. If I dared, I would be sent to live with my grandparents, and I needn’t think that my father and his floozy would have me live with them (which I would have hated anyway). There was no way either, that I would have been able to afford to move out of my own choice. In my part-time job, I was bringing home about £140 a week, and mother demanded I handed over £100 of that. £50 for rent and housekeeping and £50 for her to hold in savings for me for when she decided I was ready to leave home. I was starting to think that would be at least the age of thirty. The remaining was mine to spend, though Mum was constantly asking what I had spent it on.
Now, I can see that I’m probably painting Mum out to be a complete monster here. To be fair, she is a very loving, caring woman. That was part of her problem. She loved me too much, and wanted to keep me her little girl forever. As long as I lived by her rules though, we mostly got on very well and she took me out often, to local museums and art galleries and to the garden centre and out for lunch. As I’ve already said, I was allowed out until 7pm, as long as she knew where I was and it was within reasonable distance, so I did get to go out with the girls and go shopping and to the cinema. My friends were also welcome to come over, as long as it was convenient and only when Mum was at home.

[Shadowfax]

Sounding good so far =3 I like your writing style ^_^

Look forward to reading more =)

[Si-Amber]

Thanks hun! I shall write more after my holiday

[Woeler]

I say you're off to a good start. It's a shame not many people post in this section of the forum.