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Post by Robin on Jun 29, 2006 7:30:28 GMT -8
Say thankya.
I see what you mean about the coffee grounds. Late nights aren't good for my metaphors, but it's the only time that I can squeeze out these babies. XD So I'll go work on that.
Any suggestions? I'm pretty much at a loss.
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Post by Robin on Jun 28, 2006 23:15:03 GMT -8
More Marty! Hooray! But it's not really Marty here. He's sort of dead. This is all Kit/Chris/Whatever his name is. But yeah him dying was the crux of the story, the point of it, so it's not like I'm giving it away, anyways. The original piece I wrote on this was the very end, when Marty was like uber dead. So there. I got nothing else to say except two and two makes four, the lights in the sky are stars, if there's blood grownups can see it as well as kids, and dead boys stay dead. Oh, and I made a banner of this kid who looks like Marty. Instead of Hail Mary, full of grace, it's Hail MARTY, full of grace. Hahaha. ------- Marty’s funeral was a bittersweet affair. On the one hand, it was the most brutal way possible to cement it in our minds that Marty was dead, but on the other the funeral was so unlike him that, besides its final-sounding intonations, wasn’t painful in and of itself. Most of us were non-Catholic and did not attend the Requiem Mass, but we came to the agreement amongst ourselves that it wouldn’t be taboo for us to go to the burial. So, we went. And we stood there, dreading the rain that the darkening clouds and cool, moist air threatened, dreading the moment when the coffin – I couldn’t think of it as his coffin then, and later on it was no easier – would be lowered into the ground, covered with dirt, buried six feet under. Under dirt. Under ground. But then again, the other options were just as painful. He could have been cremated and kept in a silver jar on his dad’s mantel, if they weren’t Catholic. That was almost too much to bear. So he was buried. But oh, how it hurt. I remember standing there, my skin tingling, as the priest intoned the lines that, I suppose, every Catholic priest has said many times in their life. “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, for he has visited and brought redemption to his people. He has raised up a horn for our salvation within the house of David his servant, even as he promised through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old: salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us, to show mercy to our fathers and to be mindful of his holy covenant and of the oath he swore to Abraham our father, and to grant us that, rescued from the hand of enemies, without fear we might worship him in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.” The words drifted like smoke from the priest’s – later I would be told his name was Bolton, Father Quinn Bolton – mouth, drifted like coarse souls in the throaty thrumming before true purring started. It was cold out, so cold that tiny white puffs appeared whenever I breathed out, and the same went for Father Bolton. At the time, I associated this smoke with the words that he was saying and, for a few delirious weeks after the funeral, during which I was both sick with the flu and my loss of Marty, I would think of him as the Devil. The Devil, the one who killed Marty. Who else could have found such a perfect vessel as a driver torn by emotional and physical turmoil, one with a recent breakup fermenting in her mind and three bottles of beer burning in her stomach? Certainly not God. God, nice guy that he was, was not good at finding vessels, I figured. His vessel for us was Marty, and He certainly didn’t know it was a bad choice until after the fact. What kind of God takes a soul like Marty’s, a harmless, pure soul, and lets so many people come to love it, to love Marty, only to let it fall away in one careless act? Apparently, our God did. He had good intentions, I was sure of it even then, even with Marty’s death so fresh in my life, but, as Jurassic Park and Roland Deschain of Gilead have taught us, good intentions aren’t the only ingredient a person needs. And yet, that wasn’t the most painful part. No, it wasn’t the priest reciting those sterile passages that, beautiful by themselves and meaningful to all, weren’t Marty, that opened up festering sores in our hearts. It was Victor Huff, a pothead and a straight C student, who did that for us with his guitar. Marty’s family was Catholic, but not strictly so, and in this day and age funerals aren’t strictly governed in any case. And so, we were allowed to get up and say something if we wanted to, and so Victor Huff sang. He got his guitar and stood in front of the crowd of mourners, his own clothing an almost laughable attempt at seriousness; a black Pink Floyd tee-shirt under an old suit jacket that was two sizes too big for him, and black slacks. He didn’t seem to care. He got his guitar, and he played Made to Last, a Semisonic, song of course. At first, I was angry by this, thinking that the idiot had forgotten that Marty’s favorite Semisonic song wasn’t even close to Made to Last; it came an entire album later. Sunshine & Chocolate was an entire different breed of song from Made to Last. But then, I realized that Victor wasn’t playing Made to Last because it was Marty’s favorite song. He was playing it because he had to, because it described what we were all feeling, and it described Marty. And once he got started, once he got past the first verse, I had decided that it was actually all right. More than all right. It was damn fine. I was feeling strangely fine, and it was good. The performance was feeling strangely fine, even though ole Vicky hit a few sour notes and his voice nowhere neared the sound or quality of Dan Wilson’s. It was the words that mattered. The words were the Marty part, not the voice. “Made to come alone and pair up, flash like a rolling stone, seventy-one.” His words drifted around us like smoke, too, but this was a welcome smoke, like the haze of marijuana that sometimes encased Wyatt Dreier’s basement when one of the gang managed to get a hold of some of their parent’s pot. “One time love affair with the earth, waiting on the air for some rebirth for what it’s worth.” The longer he sang, the better he sounded. It was a crooked, keening sound, off-tune but earnestly so, and warm in pleasant in the way coffee grounds can be warm in pleasant at the bottom of your cup on a cold day. Maybe Victor was the coffee grounds at the bottom of the cup. The best part of waking up is Folgers in your cup, and Marty was Folgers, I knew it, he was just made out of coffee grounds like Victor Huff, people like Chris Stevens with his long hair and militant father, people like Carolyn Petty, martyrs like him, and people like Wyatt Dreier, who loved the martyrs. And I had loved a martyr, too, a thought that came to me while listening to Victor Huff’s knotted, twisting voice and sweet and sour notes. I had helped to create Marty. I was coffee grounds, too. It would have been corny to sing along, but, oh, how I wanted to, and I saw several other people, including Sid Boyle and Fred Bell, lick their lips restively and swallow convulsively, as if they, too, were resisting the cheesy but oh-so-desirable urge to join in. As Victor finished up his song, and we all clapped vigorously (though the sound landed flat in the chill, moist air), and he took his place in the crowd, not teary or puffy-eyed but smiling, a part from the near end of Father Bolton’s second intonement, the Canticle of Luke, came to me unbidden, reading in my mind as clearly as Marty’s Hail Mary had, once upon a time. “And you, child, will be called prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give his people knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God by which the daybreak from on high will visit us to shine on those who sit in darkness and death's shadow, to guide our feet into the path of peace." The words did not drift like smoke, neither devil-smoke nor warm Wyatt Dreier marijuana smoke. They drove themselves into my mind like stakes into a vampire’s chest, plunging through soft tissue as though they weren’t words but lightning bolts hurled from God – or from Marty – Himself. Because that was what Marty did, wasn’t it? In the end, it’s what it all amounted to. He guided our feet into the path of peace. He was a martyr, maybe even a gunslinger, the last one, not that one John Kennedy. Childe Marty to the Dark Tower came. I could see it. And at the end of the funeral, this fancy had propelled itself into almost a fact in my mind, and I stayed until long after everyone else was gone and the gravediggers were filling in the hole. I picked up a handful of the dirt from the grave – I still couldn’t think of it as his grave – and packed it neatly into an empty matchbox I procured from my pocket. That done, I tucked the box to its proper place and looked down at the rapidly disappearing surface of the brownish coffin. “Hile, gunslinger,” I said, touching my fist to my forehead as a certain dinh had done a great many times in Stephen King’s monstrous brainchild. I almost smiled then. Almost. ------- Yeah I'm not sure what the Dark Tower stuff at the end is. I probably felt like taking a dump all over King because he angers me so damn much I want to beat him over the head with the book of his that royally pissed me off (maybe taped to another book where the love of my life dies) until he's good and woozy, then push him into oncoming traffic in front of a big, big truck, or maybe in front of a speeding train. Then he'll know how my boy felt.
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Post by Robin on Jun 25, 2006 21:52:32 GMT -8
'Kay, Chris is a boy now and his name's Kit, for now. I can't find another good Chris-related name, so if anybody has any suggestions feel free to toss them out there.
And this one is a lot more religious. For my own protection, I'm not trying to convert you or anything. It's just an important part of this moment.
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The day Marty’s mom died, we were in Wyatt Dreier’s basement, drinking (some of us soda, most of us passing around a bottle of cheap scotch that Sam Jordan had commandeered from his dad’s sock drawer). Sid Boyle was there, playing the part of tagalong that he was forever eager to play, and had been trying to “convince” Marty and I to, as he so charmingly and maturely put it, “do it.”
“They call it a loveseat because Marty and Kit are supposed to do it on it,” he informed us matter-of-factly, and Wyatt choked on his grape soda. “You can’t use that line again,” he said to Sid. “You already used it on Cuh-cuh…” He spluttered on the last word and couldn’t say it, but just shook his head and took a vehement swig of his soda, latching onto the bottle so hard I could hear his teeth clink against the glass. A quaff of the scotch would have done him good – I was feeling pleasantly fuzzy, myself – but I hadn’t seem him drink at all since Caroline died. Sid licked his lips and stared at Wyatt with wide eyes for a moment, and then seemed to recover. A clownish grin spread across his face. “Yeah, but this time it’s different, my dear Wyatt. I told ole Carrie that they call it a loveseat because the guy who invented it banged his girlfriend on it.” He cast a glance back at Marty, and they exchanged grins before Sid went on. “I think Marty should have invented it. But then I wouldn’t have gotten to tell Carrie the joke about it.” “Don’t call her Carrie!” Wyatt’s hand was clenched around the bottle so tightly that his knuckles were white. “She hates it when people call her Carrie!” Marty and I exchanged a glance. I had a feeling that I wasn’t the only one who found it subtly disturbing that Wyatt still referred to Caroline in the present tense.
The uncomfortable silence that followed was broken by the strident jingling of the telephone. The tightness I had seen in Marty’s shoulders relaxed and Sid broke into the happy beam that he was so familiar with. Sam and I both breathed a sigh of relief, and Wyatt stared at the ceiling as he had become accustomed to do since Caroline’s death. Sid, who was closest to it, picked up to phone and answered with a snappy ‘hola.’ Whoever was on the other line talked for a minute, and his forehead crinkled slightly. “Huh? Oh! It’s you, Mr. Randall! Do you want to talk to Marty?” He passed the phone over to the other boy, and both Marty and I frowned and the former pressed the receiver to his ear. “Yeah, dad?” I couldn’t hear his dad on the other side of the line, but I could see Marty, and what I saw wasn’t good. His expression changed with an almost comic sync to what his father was saying from consternation to apprehension to deflation to horror. “What?” he said into the receiver, and his voice cracked so badly that he had to repeat himself. “What happened? Yeah, I’ll be over there as soon as I can.” He hung up and looked up around the room, his face the exhausted, pinched visage of an old man. “My mom’s dead,” he said. “She OD’d.” Wyatt gave a choking sound that might have been laughter and might have been sobbing. Sam shook his head and took a monster swig of his dad’s scotch. Marty told him to throw some of that his way, and when the bottle came to him he drank so long that I thought he was going to suffocate. I stood up then. “Come on, Marty,” I said to him quietly. “We’ll go to the hospital.” He allowed me to half-pull him to his feet, and he handed the bottle over to Sid reluctantly. “We’re stopping by my house first,” he said, and I didn’t argue.
At his house, he went straight to the room that his parents shared with the single-minded determinedness that I had never seen him use except when dealing with his Semisonic CDs. He rifled around in there for awhile, and came out with a beautiful rosary dangling from his fingers. He held it out from him like it was something dead and looked at it like it was something impure that he touched only out of necessity. “Mom always wore this,” he said bitterly. “She always used to joke that the Lord would strike her down if she took it off. I saw her put it in her jewelry box this morning; I don’t know why.” He was looking somewhere above my head, his eyes a stormy blue-gray that disturbed me as Wyatt’s reference to Caroline had earlier. There was a heartbreaking tension in his neck that made me reach out my hand impulsively to touch his shoulder, murmuring his name softly, but the trembling of those shoulders made me draw back.
“I’m going to bury it,” he announced, as if we had had a long conversation surrounded the rosary. I looked at the lovely thing and had to restrain myself from gaping in horror. I was not Catholic myself, but I knew the significance of it to the religion and I knew that the crucifix wasn’t just plaster and paint. It was made of some heavy metal from the way it hung from his fingers, and besides the beautifully detailed Jesus on it, it was embedded with tiny jewels that, though I suspected they could have been paste, were sparkling like a lake under sunlight. He looked down from the place above my head, his eyes suddenly a clear and intense blue. “Are you going to help me?” For some reason I couldn’t find my voice. When I finally did it cracked a little, even after I had cleared my throat subtly. “Of course, Marty.” He nodded and disappeared into a door that I assumed led to the garage, and came back in with two shovels cradled in his free arm. He still held the hand that held the crucifix out from his body, like I would hold a rotting mouse or snake. He led me out to the backyard, walking stiff and solemn like a man walking to a funeral, and then lightly tossed me one of the shovels, pointing to a spot with the toe of his tennis shoe. Dingy and dirty as the shoe was, it shone bright as faith in the grass that was the dark green that Mr. Randall would only allow it to be. “Right here,” he said. “This is where we’re digging.” He looped the rosary about his wrist and stabbed the tip of his shovel into the ground. After he had a hole started that was big enough so that two shovels could actually work at the same time, I started helping. It was not hot outside, but the soil was stiff and consisted mostly of clay, and the shovels were too big for either of us to handle properly. I could feel beads of sweat popping out on my forehead and blisters beginning to form on my hands, and wondered wryly how Marty was faring. Oddly enough, I had always had the tougher hands of the two of us. He had nimble, steady hands, better suited for untangling jewelry chains or rubbing scratches out of CDs (and act which he did with a great amount of tenderness as well as aptitude) than digging holes or anything like that.
At some point during the digging, I looked over at him to see if he looked anywhere near finishing. He had paused for a moment, and I thought for a few seconds that he was going to say the hole was deep enough, but he had merely taken the crucifix off of his hand and tucked it into his pocket. Finishing that, he looked at me, and his face was haunted. The need; the desperation in his eyes was enough to send my own eyes and nose the tingling, needling demand of my body to cry. “You can stop whenever you want,” he told me, . “You don’t have any obligation here.” “But I do,” I said, and he just looked back at the hole. “Won’t be able to dig much farther anyways,” he said, almost too quietly for me to hear, and I nodded in agreement even though I knew he was too absorbed in the digging to look over at me. We had almost reached the water table, which wasn’t exactly a great accomplishment, but what wasn’t exactly child’s play, either. Even so, I didn’t think as I dug and only stopped when I felt Marty’s hand, hot and moist, on my wrist. “Don’t dig any farther,” he said, and I was only too happy to comply. I tossed my shovel aside and he did the same, turning the motion into a fluid combination as he reached into his pocket and drew out the crucifix. He shook it out slowly, gently, and I could see his eyes morph a confused cycle from blue to gray as he watched it glimmer in the pale gray light seeping through the clouds. “Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death,” he said, almost wistfully, and dropped it into the hole with a disrespect nearing ignorance that belied his near-reverence before. He looked down on it for a moment before kicking a clod of dirt into the hole, dirtying the shine of the crucifix at the crux of the rosary, and then beginning to fill it back in. My arms screamed in protest as I picked up my shovel and began to help, but filling in the hole was easier work than making it. We were done quickly, and Marty didn’t even bother to pack down the soil. He just dropped the shovel and slumped.
Discarding my own shovel, I took a couple steps towards him and reached for his hands, pulling them up palms up. They were blistered and raw looking, smeared here and there with blood. “Your hands,” I said, and uttered a noise akin to the one Wyatt had made earlier, the laugh-sob. “My hands,” he replied, his face solemn. “Stigmata, do you think?” Those blue eyes, so heart-breaking in their indecision of color, were shimmering with the first traces of tears, and, in a surge of compassion for him that I hadn’t found it necessary to feel for Marty in a long while, I found myself kissing the palms of his hands, not caring that I was probably getting dirt and muck from the shovel’s handle and pus from his blisters all over my mouth. And it seemed fitting, to me, as his hands, the hands that he sinned with, were gone from my mouth, the mouth that I sinned with, and pressed on my back, drawing me closer so that our mouths could meet. Pray for us sinners, he had said, and it rang through my head as clearly as if I was listening to a CD that he had recorded it onto. Part of the Hail Mary; any vampire movie buff would know that, even though it was Our Father that the priests (who often lost their faith) would usually scream at Dracula as they brandished a glowing crucifix at him. If Marty had been a vampire movie buff, I would have assumed he had picked it up there, but Marty wasn’t. I was the movie buff, and he was the Catholic. I had always thought of him as a not-so-devout Catholic, a Stanley Uris type of character who was defined and grouped by his religion but really had little idea of what it meant to be a Jew or to be a Catholic. Apparently, I was wrong. Hail Mary, full of grace, I thought. The Lord is with thee. The prayer ran through my mind, even as the taste of scotch permeated my mouth from his. Lust was one of the seven deadly sins, but it didn’t seem like a sin, not then. Not with his shoulders, bird-thin and vulnerable beneath my hands. Anything that vulnerable, that innocent, could never sin. He could suffer for the sins of others, but he could never sin himself. Marty the Martyr. Marty the Saint. How was it that I had come into the company of a saint when I had never wished for such a blessing (or curse, depending on what point of view one chooses to take), when there were others who would have gladly mutilated themselves or died to share one moment of the intimacy that we had? At the moment, I didn’t care. All I cared was that there was Marty, there was the taste of scotch, and there was the prayer. Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death, he had said. Against his mouth, my lips formed the word ‘amen.’
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Post by Robin on Jun 25, 2006 19:08:46 GMT -8
Ohhh yeah. I did. And then I went and ate dinner and forgot about you.
"I'm not picturing it all dramatic. Just sort of a absent hand, more of like a modest gesture than a 'holyshitgasp' gesture."
I see. Just something modest would work. I guess you could put an adjective like 'absent' or something just to make it clear.
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Post by Robin on Jun 25, 2006 15:56:12 GMT -8
Chemist Chemist Chemist Chemist!! You're here. <3 How'd you find the site?
"rouged petals"
Me no likey. Petals just doesn't seem to fit. You just don't normally hear lips described like that so it's hard to visualize. Would something along the lines of 'rosebud' be the same? It's sort of used a lot, but that would be a small price to pay. Lewis doesn't describe people a lot, at least not in the stuff I've read, amd it'd just be sort of easier on the brain if you used a word us lesser creatures could visualize.
I could just not have a very good imagination, though. It's just my thoughts on it.
"resting a palm on her breast."
Doesn't really seem like her. Remember the silent film 'my-rotten-rat-of-a-brother's-taking-my-inheritance-money' bit? I think it was either when Lewis and Gabriel were breaking up or when Lewis was pissed at Jareth. I think Gabriel. But that's what this thing is like. It's just like...I can't see her doing that. She's flustered, but it seems like she'd do something more pissy, like clench her fists until her nails cut her palms or something bitchy like that.
To be honest, I don't see much else here that bugs me. It's a lot of dialogue, which makes it less prone to mistakes. And I like the word gay. It's supposed to leap out and be all like 'whoa vulgar.' I think?
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Post by Robin on Jun 26, 2006 17:46:55 GMT -8
"My name... I remember the tone he used... so soft and sensual, suggesting to me before I turned around what I was to meet. "
I don't like the way this is written. The 'my name...' at the beginning throws it all off, but it wouldn't work without it. So it'd probably be best to reword it to something like "I remember the tone he used when he said my name; so soft and sensual etc" But it's not as pretty as the rest.
"A holy picture... a woman I didn't recognize."
I'd switch the ellipses for a comma.
"I sneered."
I don't like the vision this paints. It's just a word that doesn't fit in here well.
"Was that what I was doomed to become? A vague, blind thing so wound up in the constant sliding and grinding of time to not even recall famous religious figures? Did figures matter so much? Was I still not God and Satan? Was I so holy without Jared beside me any more?"
I can see that this is before you mastered Lewis. You said before that Lewis doesn't ask direct questions a lot, so that makes this sort of offkey.
"I said, harshly; he winced."
That semicolon isn't doing much for me. I'd change it to something along the lines of "...I said, the harshness in my voice making him wince." But that's just the formatting I'd prefer to see there. You could pull together something a lot more eloquent.
"and constant rush of blood beneath the skin that smelled sweet to me..."
Ellipses aren't doing anything for this bit. It'd look better if you dropped them and added something like 'so' before sweet. Something.
""P-Please," he said, his voice catching and becoming momentarily shrill."
When a character who doesn't have the speech impediment stutters, it's usually best to write something like 'he stammered' or 'he stuttered' instead of just the norm. In IT, King never says 'Bill stuttered,' because then that'd be the whole book. But here, William doesn't usually stutter. Hah. William Denbrough and this William.
"His breath was rapid, growing faster with every moment, until it pained him and he sobbed tearlessly as he inhaled."
Ehhh. It no read so good. There's got to be a way this can be smoother. "He breathed rapidly, the rate increasing with every passing moment until it seemed to pain him and he sobbed tearlessly as he inhaled." I don't know. Something along those lines. It'd resolve the keeping within PoV, you describe what William is feeling even though Lewis shouldn't be able to know that, so you should present it like 'it seemed to...' 'he seemed to...' etc.
"He lurched forward, pawing at me, grasping my jacket, and I did not recoil but I was quite astonished by the strength with which he clung to me."
Again, it doesn't read that well here. I'd do something like "...pawing at me and grasping my jacket, and though I did not recoil I was quite astonished by the strength with which he clung to me." I'm not fond of the 'quite,' either. It seems a little too detached, and while Lewis isn't always super duper ra-ra into what he's narrating, it makes it seem like he doesn't really care, and we all know otherwise.
"his name that I often refrained from using, and he knew he had won with me."
Doesn't read well. I'd work on the formatting here - maybe something like "...his name, the name I often refrained from using, and he knew he had won with me." I'd either get rid of the often, though, and probably the with me, too. It's just sort of unneccesary and gives us the detachment that we knew isn't very Lewisy.
The other parts are good to go.
Say...didn't you post the part where Lewis changed William? Or am I daydreaming?
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Post by Robin on Apr 18, 2006 18:18:55 GMT -8
Yeah. It's pretty generic and there's nothing special about the style.
You should work on developing a unique style of your own that will help you to make even really generic ideas like this one shine. If you read a lot of books written by authors you like/admire, it should help a lot, if the authors have a good style. When I was working on getting a style, I read a lot of Stephen King (IT and this page (http://member.tripod.com/~charnelhouse/itprofiles.html) after it for characters), Brady Udall (The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint to see just how to infuse your culture into your story), Sheri Reynolds (The Rapture of Canaan...just because), and Gwyn Hymen Rubio (For how to add a sense of realism).
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Post by Robin on Apr 11, 2006 7:14:19 GMT -8
Spank you!
The only thing I'm kind of disappointed about is that I didn't get to portray 'dashboard romantic' in a more poetic light. I kind of liked it, but it turned out as comedy, so...that's that.
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Post by Robin on Mar 23, 2006 19:55:31 GMT -8
I think I was trying to be funny. I was pretty out of it when I wrote this (I was doped up on Sudafed and Nyquil), but it turned out pretty humorous so I'm assuming that's how I meant it to turn out.
I'm glad you thought it was funny though.
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Post by Robin on Mar 21, 2006 18:10:34 GMT -8
I'm not sure what this is. I know it's a short story, but, really, it's...odd. You think it's kind of prose-y at Mike's letter, but when Fiona writes him back it gets confusing. Was I trying to be funny? I don't know.
--------
Fiona -
I know you’re cheating, and you have been for a long time. Actually, you’ve been in that relationship longer than you’ve been with me, so maybe you’re actually cheating on me, but I don’t know. I was the first one you acknowledged, so I guess maybe I was your first love. Your first human love, I suppose. You went and pulled an Arnie on me, Fiona. Your first love was your car.
I’ve seen you in there, pounding the dashboard, your lips distended and stretching against the words to all the hits on the radio, and all the hits on your CDs. And then you went and listened to Glitter of Love, and when I heard the words “dashboard romantic,” I knew that was you. Who could direct such passion towards their dashboard and not be in love with it? I couldn’t, and we’re so close that I feel like you’re a mirror image of me, so I’m thinking that you couldn’t either. And why should you have to hide your love to your dashboard? Nobody would suspect you were having a love affair with it. I didn’t, not until I heard that Versus song.
You pound the dashboard when I’m there to make me think it’s nothing but an object to you, but I’m positive you sit in the car for hours after you drop me off, stroking it and soothing the bruises you inflicted on it to keep yourself from suffering a similar fate in a car wreck or gang fight or any of the other millions of perils that happen to people like you. You’re so fiery, it’s a wonder nobody’s simply shot you out of spite yet.
Why can’t you be obliging for once?
Oh, you say you’ll be obliging when it counts, but this is where it counts, and I can already see your response. If I asked you to stop this affair with the dashboard, you’d kick me in the balls, spit in my eye, and tell me you’d never fucking stop, even if you had no intention of continuing.
Love hurts, Nazareth said, and for the second time in the past few months I actually believe what songs say. Isn’t it pathetic that I’m sitting here basing my arguments and accusations off of song lyrics? Yes, just as pathetic as you, basing the tempo of your love life on the tempo of songs. Mine’s just a more open kind of pathetic.
So Fiona, I’m sorry, but I think I have to leave you. I can’t be in a relationship with somebody who’ll cheat on me even if they don’t know it yet.
Love,
Mike
P.S. I won’t be mad if you don’t write me back
FIONA’S LETTER BACK TO MIKE
Mike,
What the hell are you talking about?
Is this some guilt trip thing you made up because you feel bad about kissing Alana Mclachlan? If it is, stop it, okay? It’s creeping me out. I forgive you about Alana.
Love,
Fiona
P.S. Come over to my place Saturday, okay?
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Post by Robin on Mar 3, 2006 9:10:00 GMT -8
I can see what you mean. I think it might be a little hard to add a backstory without sounding third grade essay-y. I mean, having a backstory would be awesome here, but I don't know if I could pull it off without making this either really long and tedious (as if it isn't tedious now! Haha.) or very, very juvenile.
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Post by Robin on Mar 2, 2006 18:50:56 GMT -8
I see what you mean by the narrator sounding too full of herself. I've gone through and edited it a little bit, and I'll need some opinions on whether or not the narrator still sounds too drunk on herself.
And Ramona - what exactly do you mean by developing this more? Like add more to this piece, or make a bigger story out of the short story, or what?
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Post by Robin on Feb 27, 2006 16:02:15 GMT -8
The name's not so hot, but I like the story. So if you have any suggestions for the title, feel free to throw those in, too.
I liked the ghosts of the characters I saw in this, so I may make it into a longer story if people like this idea.
In this edit, I just tried to add some stuff that made it obvious that the narrator included herself in her chastising of the lack of significance in Marty's roadside shrine. If it didn't work, I'll just edit it some more. No biggie.
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I remember that Marty always liked Semisonic. I think everybody remembered, at least a little, that day at the funeral. Hell, Victor Huffman even brought his guitar to the funeral and played ‘Made to Last.’ It was his tribute to Marty. Victor’s whole world was music - he couldn’t think of anything else in the world that was greater or more honorable than music. Come to think of it, neither can I. I think that Victor could have chosen a better song to play. He didn’t know Marty that well, but I think that even he should have known that Marty’s favorite song was ‘Sunshine and Chocolate.’
But then again, maybe he didn’t know that. I mean, nobody thought to bring his Semisonic CDs that day when we made a shrine on the side of the road where he had been hit by a car. They all brought things like flowers and little notes that said ‘I love you Marty’ and ‘I’ll never forget you Marty.’ Oh, it was all very kind, but none of it was planned out at all. It’s like we all just woke up the day before the shrine was to be made and shouted that we had to find something to put there, quick. The only thing that was really Marty there was his picture, and even that had none of the energy that Marty had. It was just a dorky little school picture, with his hair all slicked back and a really fake “say cheese!” smile on his face. It didn’t make me angry with them or myself; it didn’t make me want to punch anybody, but it saddened me. I felt like these kids should have known better; his parents should have known better; I should have known better. We should have planned things out more, made the shrine more meaningful, but we didn’t. But I think maybe Marty would have liked it better that way. He never was one for organization or planning, or matching things.
That’s why I put the note there.
It was nothing original. Hell, it wasn’t even anything I wrote myself. It was a line from a Semisonic song, but I know it meant a lot to him. He’d go around writing it on all his binders and notes, and all the papers he didn’t have to turn in. He even had it written, in very small letters, on the side of one of his shoes. But I knew it was important to him, because he didn’t seem to want anybody to know about it: nobody who writes something that small can want others to know about it. And since we were burning the shrine after we said a few prayers over it, I figured that it would be very…Marty to write it on a little scrap of notebook paper and put it on the shrine before it burned.
So I did it. I ripped a corner off of piece of notebook paper, and wrote “until I get to kiss you again, I wish you sunshine and chocolate every day.” And when it came my turn to put something on the shrine, I put down the mandatory bunch of flowers and the piece of notebook paper down. It looked very dull and ragged in comparison to the rest of the stuff on the shrine, and I was satisfied. It was a very Marty thing to do. Marty liked mixing the old and the new. He’d often come to school wearing jeans looking so new and dark that it was almost painful, paired with a shirt that looked about to bust in places because of mere age, and grounded by a pair of ratty old Converse shoes with brand new laces in them.
I was one of the last to put items on the shrine. Not five minutes after my little ragged piece of paper had been placed on the shrine, we had finished our moment of silence and had doused the whole thing in kerosene. Sid Boyle lit a match and was so slow about the thing that the match guttered and burned his fingers, and so Fred Bell, looking tall and awkward in a suit that was too short at the arm and leg for him, snatched the matchbook from him and lit the thing on fire himself. Nobody oohed or ahhed as the shrine, and Marty’s picture, lit on fire. And I tried to watch the thing go up in flames, but I couldn’t. My little paper hadn’t caught fire. It was a windy day, and the paper was light, and so when a gust blew by, it flew off the shrine and was caught in the breeze. I watched it flutter away in the wind, a corner singed, and smiled as it left eyeshot. The paper was like Dan Wilson: it never even got to go down, down in flames.
Marty would have liked that.
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Post by Robin on Mar 3, 2006 9:16:07 GMT -8
It kind of reminds me of the Pigman. Lorraine had green eyes, and it was the feature that John said was her best. The rest of her wasn't exactly very beautiful: she was overweight, and her mother would always tell her that she wasn't a pretty girl.
Lorraine may not have been a pretty girl, but this was a pretty piece.
The only thing I have an objection to is how you chose to write it in present tense. I usually advise myself and others to shy away from present tense, because it's a lot easier to sound more juvenile in present tense. I mean, it turned out great here, but in some places, like the beginning of the first paragraph and the second paragraph, it's a little iffy. It just sounds kind of shady.
Most of your sentences were structured well, but this one was kind of piecemeal:
"Making all impressions a little sharper, like stiletto heels on polished floor, every step could leave a painful mark."
It sounded a little confusing, like the stiletto heels part was an end to the first part and a beginning to the second, but it didn't connect the two parts of the sentence. Maybe putting a colon after 'a little sharper' would help clear this up. I mean, the meaning of the sentence is clear, but as it is right now, it's a little gawky.
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Faeid
Mar 3, 2006 9:27:09 GMT -8
Post by Robin on Mar 3, 2006 9:27:09 GMT -8
It sounds really Tolkienesque, at least style wise. The storyline, as far as I can see, is more Frank Herbert-y. Of course, Frank Herbert wrote sci-fi, but that's beside the point.
I think that it was kind of odd that you chose to create whole new words for your world. Well, not so much odd as zealous. It's a good thing that you're passionate about this project, but it can confuse readers when you create new words like that. It's all good and well to just create new words for plain old things, like different ranks (such as Christie Golden's characters calling nobles/aristocrats 'uhlals' and 'uhlalas,) but I think if you go farther than that it can get confusing, especially when you're throwing in political intrigue. Christie Golden also made up new words('skuura,' 'halaan,' 'sulim'), but her story line was a lot simpler than this one. This one isn't confusing yet, but since Herbert meets Tolkien is what I'm getting from this, things can get pretty messy. I think if you're careful, you can keep things from getting sloppy, but it'll be a lot easier for things to make a mess here.
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