Ack-ack girls

I've found the quote now:

"If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it."
— Toni Morrison

That seems like a noble ambition although a lot of the books I wanted to read have been written by women like Anne Tyler, Anita Shreve and Carol Shields. I hope it will help me find exactly what I want to write about....

The following piece comes from my writing class again and all we were given was the title really and a short summary of what the Ack-Ack girls did, so really an exercise in making an imaginative leap - I'm not sure how successfully I can do this - I feel the character is still essentially me?

Ack-Ack girls

She’d never been so scared. And not just for a few minutes at a time but all the time- a kind of background hum of anxiety that became almost familiar to her as the weeks went by. It was hard to know how the others really felt – no one spoke of it, and the louder girls like Bessie acted as if their situation was just a laugh –a “jolly jape” they’d somehow got involved in.

“Cor, that banging leaves our ears tingling, don’t it girls?” she’d laugh as they went back to the hut after an engagement, as if it had just been some loud band music instead of a life-threatening attack.

Did the other girls worry about all this death Mavis mused to herself. She’d always been the quiet one at home, but still waters really do run deep – she took things to heart. She even found it hard when two of the girls fell out over borrowing a lipstick – any tension made her stomach drop away and her quietness increase. At night, she lay in the bunk thinking about the planes they’d brought down – flown by young men very similar to the ones Bess and Ev danced with in the Mess on Saturdays. They must have girls at home who loved them and mothers, anxious for news, waiting for that terrible telegram. She understood why we were in this war but couldn’t herself ignore the human cost. She found it too easy to see another’s point of view- that had always been her problem – seeing the tensions between her mother and father and how both had good cause for grievance and seemed unable to get past that to love each other. The uncertainty of each day weighed heavily on her – she’d always been someone who felt safer in routine; preferred each day to be the same as the last. Now her sleep was often disrupted with the sudden call to man the guns. They slept fully dressed with only their big coats, which lay over the scratchy blankets, and their lace-up shoes next to the bunk to complete the uniform. Eating breakfast, washing through their ‘smalls’ in the sink, listening to the BBC News - all could be interrupted with that suddenness which made her stomach lurch and her mind race.

“Here we go again” Ev would smile at her as she spoke, as if they were at the fair, not on the military camp.

“Last one up there’s a sissy,” shouted Bess, racing across the tarmac to their ack-ack station.

Mavis kept quiet – she was by nature organised and methodical and did her part of the job well. The others knew they could rely on her – the three of them made a good team, and had brought down more planes than many of the other teams. “Is that a good thing – something to be proud off?” she thought but then there was no time for thinking – the action had started.