This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
Our Novelicious Undiscovered feature is picking up where it left off and will be running until the summer when will be awarding the most commented/talked about excerpt an award and a lovely trophy!
If you would like to have an excerpt of your unpublished Chick Lit novel published on the site, then please email kirsty@writingtipsoasis.com for more details. There is a waiting list so please be aware that you may have to wait before your excerpt is featured!
You can read our previous Undiscovered entries here.
Our excerpt this week comes from Vicki Wilson, a freelance and fiction writer who lives in New York. You can visit her website here!
Enjoy! Any constructive criticism or thoughts are welcome in the comments section.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Alice Nelson is a single, 28-year-old, 27-pounds-overweight, drug rep. For Erecticil. The erectile dysfunction drug. So when she's not enduring smirks from secretaries in the doctors' offices where she peddles her wares, she's killing herself at the gym to lose those 27 pounds that she thinks are the root of everything drab in her life.
Some might call Alice cynical; others with a kinder, gentler tongue — like her soon-to-be-divorced best friend Kath, who's sleeping with the mailman — would say Alice just needs a confidence boost. Either way, Alice's life is screaming for an overhaul. When she’s faced with losing her job because of a terrible mistake, she realizes she needs to get her priorities straight. A beautiful, sad young widow Alice befriends at the gym and the mailman's brother, a pediatrician, might just be the right people to help her see that it’s not the size of her thighs, but her heart, that matters.
EXCERPT OF IT'S NOT MY THIGHS, IT'S JUST BAD LIGHTING BY VICKI WILSON
There it is: full frontal nudity in my hotel bathroom. I stand in the tub, shower door open, and, across from me, a mirror the size of a Jackson Pollock mural doesn’t steam up; it’s some sort of fancy heated model that prevents fogging. So, I see myself, my whole self (except for my shins and my feet), in a way that I haven’t in probably 10 years. Oh boy. This is bad.
What makes me decide to turn around to check out my ass is still a mystery. But it’s definitely worse.
“Shit.” It’s all I can think of to say.
Luckily, I am on my way home from this hellish hotel, from this pointless pharmaceutical conference where you had to eat every meal standing up, which means you hardly eat anything at all. And then, you order room service when you get back to your room (alone) and there’s no one there to see that you’ve eaten your entire cheeseburger, fries, and even the coleslaw, which no one ever eats.
What is cellulite?
So, yeah, I’m going home today after three days of conferencing (“conferencing” now a real word because so many people host these things).
I need a new job.
I need a new life.
I wrap myself in an oversized hotel towel. It dwarfs me. I look much better. There should be a warning in the shower: Apply Large Towel Before Exiting Bath.
But I don’t blame the lack of warning signs or even the non-fogging mirror. I blame the lighting. It’s that yellow unnatural overhead light. Who wouldn’t have cellulite in shoddy conditions like this?
I step onto the fancy heated stone floor and turn the brass knob of one of the faucets over the double sink.
It’s not my thighs, I say to my reflection. It’s just bad lighting.
That’s it.
My whole life is just poorly lit.
I am not overweight. Surely my doctor would’ve said something if I was. I turn to the woman in the plane seat next to me. I want to ask her, “Has your doctor ever told you you’re overweight?” It would be a good test, you see, because she obviously is. I wouldn’t say that part to her, though.
I’m sure she would misinterpret the intent of my question.
I was not overweight as a child. I was skinny. To the point of doctors wondering if I was malnourished. I might’ve been. I hated eating. I would sit at the dinner table well after my family had finished, my parents not letting me get up until I had eaten everything on my plate. By that time, it was cold and tasted bad. Cold canned peas. Cold beef. I don’t remember ever really eating it, but I must’ve because I didn’t spend all of my young years plopped at the kitchen table. I played outside. I read underneath the maple tree in the back yard. I walked my cat.
The woman in the seat next to me shifts. She has fallen asleep. Her elbow knocks mine off the armrest, but not before I notice that, side by side, our arms are almost the same size.
I am overweight.
The gym is bright. Everything is stainless steel. I guess this gives the illusion of sterility. As though some 45-year-old man’s ass sweat had not, indeed, just been smeared all over the vinyl seat of the reclining bicycle.
“I’m Alice,” I say to the woman at the front desk. It’s 8:30 in the morning, and she doesn’t look much like a morning person. She tosses a form on a clipboard at me.
“Fill that out,” she says. “Then Kevin will be out.”
Terrific. I got a male trainer. When they asked on the phone if I cared if my trainer was male or female, I said I didn’t care. But I do. I want a woman. I just didn’t speak up.
The questionnaire is extensive. Eating habits (none). Exercise habits (none). Family health history (spotty – cholesterol, high blood pressure, early balding in men). Next of kin (dog: Maslow). Age (28). Sex (ha).
“Here you go,” I say, handing the clipboard back to Ms. Sunshine.
“Take a seat, and I’ll buzz Kevin.”
I flip through the remarkably up-to-date magazines on the side table in the reception area, and my opinion of the place improves. They have the latest issues of Glamour and Forbes. I don’t pick up the Forbes.
“Alice?” a male voice says. I look up, but not far up, into the eyes of who must be my trainer. Kevin. My five-foot-tall trainer. Granted, he has muscles and a large neck. But he is five feet tall.
“Why don’t we go into my office? We’ll go over your questionnaire and then hit the gym,” he says.
I stand up.
I am five-eight.
He doesn’t seem to notice.
I follow him to his office.
“Have a seat, Alice,” he says. I sit in a purple plastic chair near his desk. The walls are covered with healthy weight charts and posters of a pumping cardiovascular system.
“So why are you here, Alice?”
“To lose weight.”
“Right,” he says, smiling. “You have no next of kin?” he continues, looking at my form.
“Just the dog.”
“We need a person, in case of emergency,” he says.
“Are you going to cause an emergency?” I’m thinking of when I’m raising a dumbbell over my head and he won’t even be able to reach the bar to spot me. It’ll crash down, maybe on my thighs where, since they’re rather padded, I won’t break anything, I’ll just bruise.
“Maybe.”
“OK, then put down my friend Kath’s number. She’s good at crisis action.”
He jots down the number with a purple pen.
“So,” he says, pointing to a doctor-like scale in the corner. “Up on the scale.”
Ugh. I contemplate taking off my shoes, my hair clips, and my mascara to see what that can do for me, but in the end, I just jump right on.