PROMPTuesday #216: The One Thing

The question caught me by surprise. “Mom? When are you going to finish your book?”

I deflected. “Soon.” My brain raced through the reasons for my answer: too much work, health issues, rapid time slippage, not enough days.

“Have you written anything in it this year?”

I calculated the month – April, and realized we were nearly four months into 2013. I wasn’t used to being sheepish around my daughter. “No.”

She waited a second, one just long enough to let my answer settle and heave its weight. “OK.” She picked up her notebook and newly sharpened pencil. “I’m going upstairs to write.”

I watched her back and remembered several months ago when I opened my laptop and invited my daughter to read my work in progress. She read with intense concentration for a few moments and handed the computer back to me. “That’s enough.”

“You didn’t like it?” She was eight, but her opinion would shatter or sustain me.

“No.”

I held my breath. Where was my breath?

She continued, “It’s inspiring,” and then added the phrase that brought my memory: “I’m going upstairs to write.”

I stared at the white screen in front of me. I read the words. I heard my daughter root around her bedroom for her notebook, her pencil. She shouted down the stairs: “I’m calling it “The Elegance of Blood!”

She loved words like I did, and spent time arranging them in patterns that pleased her or surprised us.

I don’t know if I smiled or frowned when I looked again at my words in front of me. Either way, I said what was true, “It’s perfect.”

Then it was April again.

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Today’s creative writing prompt: What one thing do you want to finish before your time is up?

Please post your response in the comments or write about it on your blog and leave me the link.

First time to PROMPTuesday? Read a bit about it here. Want to see what’s been written in the past? Catch up on the PROMPTuesdays archive here.