The bartender shrugged his shoulders and continued down the bar waiting on other customers.

Her hand shook as she reached toward the glass. It seemed as if she waited her entire life for this moment. To any unsuspecting person she would appear as a woman seeking a drink in a local bar; but it was far more. It was her 21^st birthday, and her day to taste what her mother loved more than her.

She brought the glass to her lips and in one swallow, the liquid demon disappeared. She placed the glass back on the bar as the sting of the bourbon took her breath. Her eyes watered as she felt the heat slowly invade her body like a sickness. A calm feeling washed over her, and the hooks of the drink sank deep in her soul.

A school counselor once told her the alcohol didn’t influence her mother, it was the addiction. But, it was easier to hate something substantial, and visible. She didn’t need intangible evidence of why her mother never loved her, she needed something to hold. Now that something was coursing through her bloodstream, trying to convince her that she would love it just as much as her mother, if only she would give it a chance.

She quickly slid off the bar stool and headed for the restroom, she barely cleared the door before she spewed the liquid from her stomach. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and walked over to the chipped sink barely hanging on the wall. She rinsed her hands and mouth and caught her gaze in the broken mirror above the sink. Her eyes were still haunted; she hadn’t found the answer she was seeking from her little experiment.

Did she really believe that with one drink she would understand why her mother never told her she loved her? Why she wasn’t a homeroom mother, even though she never worked an honest day in her life? Why she stopped off at a bar, the night of Lacey’s high school graduation for some liquid courage and never saw her deliver her speech as the Valedictorian of Valley High?

Lacey’s mother watched her seventeen-year-old daughter leave home because she couldn‘t bear staying afloat in the tide of her mother’s demons one more day.

For the first time in years, tears silently flowed from Lacey’s eyes. Tears suppressed because it would give the alcohol more power.

Lacey looked at her reflection in the mirror. Her face divided by the broken crack in the middle of the glass. She began laughing uncontrollably through the tears. How could one small crack define her?

The laughter died on her lips as the truth of the moment settled around her. She was broken, and no matter how she tried to repair the crack all the hate kept seeping through, over and over again.

She reached up and covered the crack from end to end, but the rough edges brushed against her palm reminding her that she was only hiding the pain.

She dropped her hand at her side. The crack reappeared, and the vulnerability she felt resurfaced. But in its wake was an underlying current of anger.

It was time to stop living for what could never be, and wishing for a do over. Life was a one-time deal, and she was in control. She could ask herself why for the rest of her life, or choose to put the negative energy behind her.

By facing a shot of bourbon, she had already started.

We all experience a gamut of emotions throughout our lives. Whatever we deal with in everyday life provides us with a source to channel when we write. I deleted the previous scene from my WIP because I thought it contained too much back-story to work in my overall story. I may work it in at some point, but it isn’t time wasted. It was a difficult scene to write, because I have never experienced that kind of anguish. Allowing myself to get inside Lacey’s skin at that moment was a stretch for me, but sometimes you have to go with your gut instinct and become one with the pain.

Even in scenes that will probably never see print, I learn so much about myself as a writer. I struggle daily to get a handle on my characters, and make them appear as if they are real flesh and blood. It’s not always an easy task, because it’s hard to know how to keep a reign on someone that can easily get out of hand from scene to scene. I find myself backtracking in my scenes, comparing one set of actions to the next, hoping for consistency. This in itself is a chore, especially when my heroine is dealing with emotional circumstances that are all over the scale. I want to transfer personal emotion to my characters, but not personal reactions. I want it to be about them, not about me. Sometimes this is easier said than done, a perfect example of why I try to create a character that has a life much separated from mine. Thus bringing back the issue of not being able to fit into my character’s shoes. Building characters is hard work, with one wrong reaction I can damage the work of previous chapters. But I have to admit it’s nice to come home from a days work and slip into the skin of a supermodel with a hot mysterious man from her past wrecking havoc on her life, and a handsome senator acting as her boyfriend. Now that’s the kind of anguish I like to channel.