Writing with My Daughter

For the first time ever, my daughter and I sat down together and wrote fiction. She's twelve, and she's 100% certain that she can't write a paragraph. That's not true, of course, but I tried to stay on topic and keep her from repeating that too many times.

I've wanted to write something other than erotica for a while, but I can't imagine anyone buying some little story I write without the added bonus of the smut. Young Adult is what I'd like to do, but young adults today like the Hunger Games, Twilight, Harry Potter. I can't even enjoy reading them, much less writing them.

I was brooding on this one morning in the shower, trying to come up with an idea that some kid would actually read. Just as I was ready to resign myself to writing smut forever, my brain switched over to a little story I wrote last summer for Literotica, The Side Effect. This is the closest to Sci-Fi I've ever stepped. In this story, the (foolish) man can't bring himself to go down on the woman he wants to marry, so his sister hooks him up with a woman with questionable ethics from a pharmaceutical lab who gives him a drug with strange side effects--senses and sense organs get mixed up.

As soon as I thought of that little tale, I had my premise. I'm not going to tell you what it is ('cause I don't want anybody stealing my story!), but within minutes of making the connection, I had my main character, her abilities, her family, her backstory. My brain was on fire!

But I was afraid to tell my kids what I was planning. All I needed was a judgmental twelve year old rolling her eyes and saying, "That's stupid, mom. Nobody would read that."

After a couple of weeks, I had to spill it, just because we really needed a good mother-daughter bonding moment. I told her what I was going to do, and braced for the smack-down. Instead, she giggled. "I would SO read that," she said.

Wait. What? It's not dumb? Am I dreaming? Did she just say she'd read that?

So I said, "Well, then you can help me write it."

Today we sat down at the table, each with our graph paper composition books and we started to brainstorm. Then we started to write. We had two good paragraphs written by the time we had to go out for the day, and the minute we got home, SHE ASKED TO WORK ON IT AGAIN.

We finished chapter one before we decided we'd done enough for one day. It needs some polishing, but we are ready to go on chapter two tomorrow.

Writing with my daughter is awesome.

Ugh. It's been so long since I've used Dreamweaver.

I hardly remember how to use it. I like playing around with websites and all, but I am way out of practice.

I'm not sure why I'm bothering. I'm not quite ready to make a go of selling my stories, but sometimes it seems easier than writing. Like this weekend. The website. Searching for photos. Trying to put together visual things. It took a massive amount of concentration, which kept my mind off the work issue that's eating away at my brain. Writing wouldn't have done that for me. Not that it's easier or anything. Just requires a different kind of concentration. One that takes up the space that I allocate to worrying.

If only parents could see that their kids weren't perfect. I know mine aren't. Every child will lie. Every child will cheat. Twenty years of teaching experience and twelve years of parenting experience tell me this is true. I'm not making this up.