A last paragraph has been indented, a last sentence has received its period. There will be additional changes in another, expected to be final revision, but the majority of the 48,000 word document has been written and revised enough to have flushed out a developed story. I feel quite good about the whole thing. To me, the characters are real. 
They will forever have a place in my heart, even the two meanies who were abusive. They are life, after all, and all of us have a side that could be written as the bad guy or bitch, for sure. If you don’t believe me, hire me. I feel quite confident I can make anyone have a dark side. I’m so good at seeing my own that it is beyond my capacity to believe others don’t have one.
It was a fun romp, but I’ll be relieved when these one hundred seventy-two pages pass from me to the person they will belong to. Because, as you can tell from the title, this work will not belong to me. The characters are real, though somewhat fictionalized by request, but key scenes and the rhythm of the story are true, and have nothing to do with my imagination or where I might have taken the characters. It has the bones of a real story, but the skin of make believe.
When I agreed to do this project, I knew what I was getting into. Tremendous hours spent on something that I could not brazenly and openly claim. Poor pay with a promise of something down the road, maybe, perhaps, if at all. Limitations on what the real owner could stand to have said about him/herself and those around him/her. Possible disagreement about descriptions and details that editors are also notorious about fiddling with.
A bright side, a definite bright side, is I am not involved in the marketing, selling, entreating to agents and publishers for publication. Yes, that also reverts to the true owner, which is fine with this ghost.
Rebecca Guevara, A voice of occasional reason. 