Writing 101

A friend and I have decided to find ways to encourage ourselves to start writing again in hopes of beginning those novels we keep telling ourselves we're going to write. We found a Web site that provides short topics for writing prompts and decided to pick one daily.

I thought I'd share what I wrote for our first assignment.

Describe the easiest decision you've ever made.

I wasn’t sure where I was going, what I was going to do, or even if I was going to make anything of myself.

The one thing I knew for sure was that the test was positive. I was 21, single, living alone thousands of miles from home and pregnant.

It was the hardest phone call I ever had to make, calling my mom and telling her I was pregnant. I cringe now, just thinking about how badly I sucked at it.

Sure, I had a few options, but it was the easiest decision I’ve made in my life. I was about to embark on a difficult path, leading to God knows where, a trailer in some backwater Minnesota town like Jenkins, I imagined. I had to leave my slightly remarkable life in the big city, working behind-the-scenes in television and going to school at a nearby private college to an unremarkable return to my parent’s basement with a baby in my belly and a 90-minute one-way commute to the nearest state university.

But it worked out. The baby is now a beautiful high school junior who towers over me, gets straight As and drives me insanely crazy most days.

And I couldn’t have planned it any better.