On Writing: Free writing

On this second week of practicing what I preach, during a lecture this morning I gave my students the following prompt:

"The first time I told my family about _________, they didn't believe me."

As a group we shared possibilities - the Area 51 conspiracy, being held in custody, the noises - and then we took six minutes of free writing time to see what might come out of it. The deal was that while possibilities had been shared, we could also use something else entirely to fill out the blank in the sentence. I chose "her".

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The first time I told my family about her, they didn't believe me. But it was the most serious conversation we'd had in years. I tried to explain that I didn't mean for it to happen; it was one of those freak acts of life - not that my mother bought that excuse.

"Don't say it just happened," she cautioned me. She told me I sounded like my father, said, "He was big on things just happening, too." 

My sister was the more composed out of the two of them, as though she'd always known this was coming. She calmed Mum down in the end, promised that she'd sort things. Then, when we were on our own, she asked what I'd done with the body...

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