Realization on I-85—Robin

I spent a good part of my vacation last week on Interstate 85 traveling between my in-laws house in Greenville, South Carolina and my parents’ house in Atlanta.

The realization happened just north of Commerce, GA (where they happen to have a killer outlet mall that we happened to stop off at and do some massive shopping.)

I was driving and chatting with my mother about what’s been going on in our lives—which basically consisted of me going on and on about what Jay, Eve and I have been up to and my mother smiling and nodding in her sweet southern way.

Then she asked me, “How’s your writing going?”
“Fine! Fine! Why? Did you hear something was wrong!?”
Apparently she really just wanted to know how my writing was going. Hmmm.

I told her that I was about a third of the way through my first young adult novel and she said she knew, that I told her about it a while ago. “I did? Well, what did I tell you?”
And my mother proceeded to tell me what my own novel is about. She described it in one sentence, in her sweet southern way.

While what she said was true, it prompted me to give her the following reply: “That sounds like the dumbest story I’ve ever heard!”

So we kept talking on and on and I managed to not talk about what Jay and Eve and I have been doing and we came up with the outline of what I think will be a much better novel.

My mother said she might even like to read a story about that.

It’s comin’ Mama.

And we’ll celebrate with a big bowl of grits.

--Robin