“Choose Your Own Adventure” Time!
Okay, so that’s sort of a sick way of
putting it, but… I’m trying something new with this story, and that’s what it
is! You know those Choose Your Own
Adventure stories where, every few pages, you have to make a decision about
what the character should do next? Well,
that’s what we’re going to do here.
I have two different ideas in mind for
what could happen with Claire’s pregnancy, obviously involving the decision she
was given at the end of this last chapter.
There’s a Plan A and a Plan B.
One of them involves her choosing her to reduce the pregnancy to twins,
which involves aborting one of the babies; the other involves her deciding to
risk it and go ahead with the triplets, which could be very dangerous for all
of them. Each side of the decision has
its pros and its cons; each plan will have its consequences. I, personally, am torn over which way to go,
and when it comes down to it, they both will work for me, and I’ll write either
one.
So, to make things interesting, I’m
putting this one on YOU, the readers.
You decide what happens. There is
a poll at the bottom of this page, and I want you to vote. Whichever choice gets the most votes is the
one I’ll go with, plain and simple.
I know this would be a HORRIBLE choice
to have to make in real life, which is why I had such a hard time making up my
mind even for the story. But in this
case, it’s just fiction, and I hope none of you have or will have to make such
a choice in real life.
If you’re going to vote (and I hope
everyone will – the more opinions, the better!), I ask you to do this: Put yourself in Claire’s shoes, and look at it from her character’s perspective. Obviously, your own views can and will come
into play, and that’s fine. But don’t
put yourself in my shoes and start
thinking about where I might take the story with each decision. I’m not going to tell you what will and won’t
happen with each decision, but I will say, it won’t make the difference in how
the story ends and whether or not Claire and Nick ever find their way back to
each other, if that helps. So think from
Claire’s point of view and make up your mind based on the info you have, which
the doctor lays out at the end of the chapter.
(And obviously, other things you know about Claire and Jamie from
previous chapters can factor in too.)
This poll will probably only be up for
a few days at most; I won’t be able to write much more until I see which way
the vote goes, and for as big of a streak as I’ve been on, I can’t take more
than a few days of not writing LOL. So
vote now, or forever hold your peace!
There is a box to leave comments on
the results page; please feel free to share your views or reasons for voting
the way you did there. Comments will be
totally anonymous unless you want to sign your name.
Thank you so much for your input!!
~Julie
8/1/06
8/4/06: Poll is Down
After a little over two full days, the
poll was showing a clear trend, with 62% of the vote going towards Claire
reducing the triplets to twins. From the
time I was online last night into the early a.m. hours, I didn’t see any new
votes cast, so I figured it was a good time to take the poll down. It didn’t look like there would be any more
shifts in the next day or so, and I had no intention of leaving the poll up
longer than that.
Thank you so much to everyone who
voted!!! Your input was very much
appreciated, and special thanks to those who left comments as well. No matter which way you voted, you all had
great points. I know it was a hard
choice to make, but I’m glad I went with this poll idea, because I have to say,
I underestimated you guys! You surprised
me with your choice! I told several
people when the poll went up, “I’ll be really surprised if they vote for Claire
to have the abortion,” but lo and behold…
LOL.
I’m surprised, but not disappointed,
not at all. I honestly had no preference
either way; if I did, I would have just made up my own mind and written what I
wanted to. But for the record, my
original idea was to have Claire have the reduction done. After doing some research and visiting many
pages and forums that were very biased AGAINST this procedure, I started to
worry that maybe the reaction from the readers wouldn’t be good… I didn’t want to give you another reason to
hate Claire LOL, so I started thinking of alternatives and came up with a Plan
B, which I also liked enough to put aside my original idea, if you guys didn’t
go for it.
Just so you will feel comfortable
about how the vote turned out… here is what Plan B was: Claire was going to choose not to have the
abortion, obviously, and take her chances with the triplets. In return for not having the angst of aborting
one of the babies, I was going to give her an extra-rough pregnancy, have her
go into labor early, perhaps almost kill her from complications, and, in the
end, have one of the three babies die shortly after birth, the same one who
would have been aborted in Plan A. That
sounds HORRIBLE of me, I know, but there is a reason. It probably would have been sadder, both for
me to write and you to read, so… it’s probably better that you voted for Plan
A. ;) It’s gonna be hard enough for me
to write this selective reduction business. =P
Honestly, I’m pretty anti-abortion personally, but this is one of the
cases where I can understand it. Still,
it would be hard to actually make that choice and go through with it, and
writing it is gonna be sad. But I guess
I’m used to that. ;) That IS what I’m
going to write, so stay tuned, and thanks again for voting!!
If you want to take a look at the
final results, click here.
P.S.
Those of you who said you wanted to selectively abort Jamie… LMFAO, I love you guys. =D I was cracking up when I saw your comments!!!