SO what's the point?

Happy Monday!

And I mean that with no sarcasm at all. I love Monday. It's Tuesdays I struggle with.

I received some feedback on Game Plan yesterday that really made me think. The reader asked:

"Was her hope to encourage young girls to feel comfortable giving their babies up for adoption?" 

And it's one of those questions that has festered with me even though I answered it easily and simply right away - no. So why is it taunting me?

Game Plan is 'just a story'. That doesn't mean there aren't themes and messages, though. It's a love story. And it's a story about being true to yourself, making hard choices and growing up doing that. But it's just a story with no political intent.

And that was tough to come to terms with when I was writing/editing it.

The easiest choice for Ella would be an abortion. But my story was about adoption and my respect for birth mothers who have lost children to adoption so an abortion would not tell the story. I really struggled with the why of it - Why would a 17 year old choose to go through a pregnancy and birth to give a baby up for adoption? Why would she choose to place a baby for adoption instead of keeping it, especially when her family was supportive. That's why it took Ella so long to find out she was pregnant - I guessed that hearing the heartbeat changes everything, regardless of the circumstance.

But it was a struggle to write her decision. The truth is, I can't know what's best in any circumstance and feel pretty strongly that it's not my right to choose or judge what someone else needs to do. I was very worried that Ella's decision would come across as judgemental and righteous to anyone who would choose differently. One of my favourite lines of the story was: "She couldn't end a life to fix her own." but it very nearly didn't make the cut... because I agonized that it would be condemning. And I worried readers would think that Ella's decision represented my categorical stance and that's just not true.

Anyways... always a good exercise to think on the whys of an emotion, there's usually something there to learn.

N