Local Girl Wins Trip to Oz

So, a few months ago I entered a writing contest sponsored by chick-lit star Jennifer Weiner. (Good in Bed, In her Shoes, etc.) She asked participants to describe a memorable moment in the last ten years of their lives, in 175 words or less.

Searching for the right subject, I thought of my wedding. The birth of my children. I thought of weddings and funerals of friends, of graduations. . .but they seemed so cliche.  Then I thought about moving to Madison in 2003. I was a newly single mom working in the for-profit world for the first time, supporting myself in every way, also for the first time.

This is what I wrote:

I told the relocation realtor what I wanted: Someplace new and quiet, with a dishwasher. A garage. Wall-to-wall carpet. Instead, she gave me what I needed.

The red brick apartment building was built in 1937. Right downtown, it was surrounded by once stately homes, worn down by decades of student tenants. The building’s second owner, an elderly woman in a wool suit and heels, showed me around. Polished hardwood floors, impossibly high ceilings, and dozens of windows with original, uneven glass. Butter colored subway tile in the bathroom and a cast iron tub. A kitchen the size of a closet. Radiators. One parking spot out back and no AC.

“What do you think?” I asked my sometimes boyfriend, who might miss me after I moved, but not enough to call.

“You’re not tough enough to live here. You need some safe, generic suburb.”

Maybe he was right. I had a new job in a new city. A new life after a splintering, jagged divorce. Everything seemed so hard.

He drove away. I signed the lease.

There is a famous quote (attributed to many different people including Mark Twain and Blaise Pascal) that "I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one." This exercise brought that quote to mind. . .and also made me focus on the choice of every word and the necessity of filling sentences with as much meaning as possible, since I had very little space. At the end of my paragraph composition I made a note to do things like this more often, because it was great practice for writing with precision. I hit send and kind of forgot about it.

Then, to my great shock and surprise, I won the contest.

My prize was a 4 day trip to LA,  where I would live a Hollywood starlet. And though I had no previous aspirations to do so, I had a crazy amount of fun, AND got to meet Ms. Weiner, who is incredibly funny and lovely in person. AND I got to see her new TV show State of Georgia being taped. The whole thing was incredible.

So that you can live vicariously through me, I'll post my diary entries from the trip over the next few days, along with some pictures. Still can't believe it all happened to me. . .