Brainstorming help?

For the idea I'm working on, I'm setting up this situation where someone close to the MC has been accused of a serious crime.  Whether or not the person actually did it is irrelevant.  (And I don't know how it will play out at all.)  But people in town and at school know about it.  Many of them believe what the news is saying.  Everyone has opinions.

Obviously, the MC is going to have issues as a result.  Not only that the accusation was made in the first place, but that perhaps, deep down, she doesn't know what to believe, either.  And it's really hard because people have already made up their minds and maybe they actually see her differently, treat her a little differently as a result.

I have pretty solid ideas about what I'm going to do with the storyline related to the crime itself and how the MC will have to come to terms with it and realize that she is still herself despite whatever [X] might have done.

To go along with this, I'm imagining an arc where there is something she's been working toward at school perhaps.  Something that requires the approval of her peers?  Something where her antagonist can use things against her because s/he wants this from her/himself.  Something that will be jeopardized because of what's happened.  Something that, at the climax, she will have to make a decision of whether it's even worth still trying for.  And, of course, she will find the strength and show everyone that she deserves this no matter what they think.  (Whether she succeeds or not is unknown to me at this time and irrelevant as well.   Because the point will be that she won't give up.) 

The most obvious choices I can think of are, like, Homecoming Queen or some type of student government position.   The former culminates with the voting and the dancing and all.  The latter is election day.  But what am I missing?  Is there something else I can use?  Those options seem a little overused, you know?

Not out of the loop!

My agent let me know that he expects to hear back from two editors this week. 

Why does he tell me these things?????

I'm kidding.  Mostly.   I mean, it's okay!  I just truly have come to enjoy knowing as little as possible.  I suppose it's good that I have enough other things on my mind that I won't be refreshing my email all day, every day, for the rest of the week...

"Every artist is a cannibal; every poet is a thief."

The good news is that I'm excited about writing at the moment.  The potentially awkward part is that my new idea was inspired by Recent Events. 

I didn't do it on purpose.  I think what happened is that with all this confusion (and there is still a ton of that -- we have no clue what happened or what's going to happen), I needed to detach myself from the whole thing.  I started looking at it from a fictional point of view, analyzing how someone who wasn't me would feel and react.  What would it be like to be a teenage girl whose [x] was accused of [x]? 

And then I started imagining her and her life and considering ideas. Somewhere, somehow, I decided that this might be a story worth telling.

I did email my agent about it (without even so much as hinting that I might have personal experience with this particular thing), and he encouraged me to work on it.  He said that RIGHT NOW should be one of the best times for me because I already have an agent, my first ms is on subs (and therefore completely out of my hands), and I don't have an editor's feedback to consider yet.   I should be free!  And write ANYthing I want.  So, I shall.  

I started making a list of scenes to start with, and I'm feeling that sick high that always comes at this stage.  The only thing that gives me pause is that a few members of my family will likely object to me writing about this concept, no matter how fictionalized I make it.  Is that a line that shouldn't be crossed?  I don't know.  At this moment, I'm not too concerned since all I have are a few pages of scribbles in a journal, you know?

RSS feed.

Someone asked me if I have an RSS feed on LJ.  I am certain the answer is "no."  Having one of those would require some kind of action on my part, correct?

Edit:  LJ tells me there is this affiliated with my account:   http://mindiscott.livejournal.com/data/rss

Is this the thing people would need to know?  Or is there something else?

I don't know what to call this.

Bad things happen every day.  You flip on the news and there is story after story about people hurting others in various ways.  It's non-stop, never-ending.

Last night, I turned on the news and heard the media perspective about something someone is alleged to have done earlier in the day in a nearby city.  That someone is a family member.  That family member is being accused of doing a thing that most people will never, ever do.  Maybe some would think about doing it.  Maybe they'd feel so much of SOMETHING that they'd consider it very seriously.  But the vast majority will never cross that line.

It was a hard day.  My mom had called my phone in the early afternoon to tell me about what happened, not remembering that I work on Tuesdays now.  For about two minutes after I hung up, I thought I was fine.  It's fine, it's fine, it's fine!  But when those approximate two minutes were up, I knew it wasn't fine.  SO MANY people are affected by this.  I don't even know who most of them are, but I do know all the ones in my family.  I know that the next days, months, years, FOREVER are going to be different now.

I called my husband.  He left work immediately to come downtown to pick me up.  We spent the rest of the afternoon together at home.

I'm sad.  And angry.  And ashamed.  And scared.  But anger wins out because THIS SHOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED.  Even if there is a mistake here and it didn't go down in the way police say it did, it's indisputable that something did happen.  It's all such a stupid fucking waste. 

In the next day or two, names will be released to the media.  It's going to get worse.  People are going to know the WHO behind the WHAT.

As I awakened this morning, I was in that special in between place.  That place where consciousness sets in slowly and everything feels bright and smooth and warm.  I opened my eyes, glanced at the clock.  Then, somewhere in those numbers, I found remembrance.

I pulled the blankets back over my head and willed reality to go away, to switch back to how it was on Tuesday morning.  It didn't.  It won't.