THE HOT LINE
So the book is coming along. I've got about eight chapters of rough draft plus a full working outline. People I've run the outline by seem to think it has potential, so we'll see.
The plot revolves around an incident that happened many years ago while my main character was doing some volunteer work at a youth crisis hotline. Like everything else in the book, this is drawn from my own experience.
This was back in the 1980's. Someone got a grant to set up a hotline, so they asked for volunteers and I signed up along with a bunch of other well-intentioned folks. We were trained as listeners and turned loose on the unsuspecting teens of my home town.
Like everything else, it was not exactly what we thought it would be. Most of the calls involved the staples of teen life, relationships and parents. A few involved gender identity issues. Some were from outright freaks looking for a little phone porn. One was from a really scary guy that made me happy we were shielded from the public.
My most satisfying moment was a call I handled where the party called back a few weeks later to say thanks for helping her through a difficult break-up. The boy friend was threatening to kill himself. My advice made a difference, and she had learned a little more about people, including herself.
In my story, things don't work out so well for my caller. But as a friend of mine likes to say, "Time wounds all heels." Works for me.
October 18, 2009
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