Risk Management

“She hadn’t been hurt, a detail the police, her mother, her sister had drawn to her attention. Repeatedly.”

I’m finally sharing a story where my protagonist has a name. In Risk Management, Gabby McMurtry suffers a life-changing event. She reacts by eliminating all potential uncertainty or danger. Though it’s hinted that she is a solitary and cautious person by nature, once in this fearful state, she secludes herself from most human interaction.

I wanted to write about someone who makes decisions based on fear and how her life might look and feel. We’ve all made choices to avoid repeating a bad outcome or to avoid an imagined disaster. However, Gabby’s unmanaged anxiety leads her to expect danger lurking in all corners. For someone like her—a wary introvert—what’s the healthy balance between solitude and social interaction? Our definitions of and tolerances for risk vary enormously. I have no idea how much this depends on personality versus life experiences. The event in the parking garage causes Gabby to move to a different apartment, to take on financial burden, to isolate herself. Whereas someone else might react by becoming more aware of his or her surroundings.

Gabby is extreme, but I’ve met people similar to her. Maybe she’s an object lesson in not managing anxiety, stress, or whatever life experiences or tendencies we have that make living in this world more difficult. In the end, her choices and actions to minimize risk put her in more danger.

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Rejections from literary agents continue to trickle in for my novel, Degrees of Forgiving. I wish I had more to report. Working on my current manuscript keeps me from spiraling into writer’s despair. This story inches forward with the invaluable feedback and editing suggestions from two writing groups. I think I’ve reached a place in that draft where I should buy a large white board to chart my plot. I’m terrible at “big picture” editing. By writing out summaries of chapters and major plot points, I can (and should) stand back and hopefully see what’s missing, what feels rushed, and what feels agonizingly over-explained. I expect to encounter all of those issues.

Thanks for coming along.

Heather