Workshop: A slight delay
Those who remember Paula from newsgroups know that in among the jabber, she is capable of flashes of astute and perceptive writing. Her parodies were well received for good reason: she has a sharp eye for the foibles of her contemporaries and her lampoons were generally on target. Paula’s chosen genre is romance, which is a real pity, because her fluent and clever style is too much for such a pedestrian genre. She’s definitely capable of writing a funny comedy, the sort of study of drawing room manners that used to be the mainstay of British writing perhaps (I don’t read anything like enough to be able to think of a modern American exemplar – perhaps Sour Grapes can help me out). Her blog writing is the same, although the desire to not soar keeps her chained to mundanity. Paula seems to have a fear of stretching herself and excelling. She seems to much prefer being queen of the kaffeeklatsch to the more serious work of noticing and remarking.
In my view, A slight delay is a beautifully observed piece. You feel Paula has looked at these people at some point and understood them. Her theme of powerlessness is well presented: we are all familiar with authority that makes seemingly senseless demands that it doesn’t feel an obligation to explain (and how appropriate this theme is right now). And Lisa is the perfect “little man” (sorry but he’s nearly always a man in the tradition of this type of story), struggling to swim in a tide of bullshit. She is wonderfully defiant. This is where Paula excels: quickly and deftly building a character. I definitely found myself rooting for her.
In places, the writing is a bit loose. It’s tempting to lean on stock phrases to help the reader along but it’s a temptation that should be ignored, and sometimes tauter is better. I’ll try to show a couple of places where I felt that was true.
A Slight Delay
Something shifted and she glanced up from her book.
“Something shifted” sounds a smidgen odd. I’d just start with “She glanced up from her book.” The question the reader asks is “what has made her do that?” so we don’t need to have answered it already.
The train had
stopped, though they were miles from the next station.
I prefer “although” for euphony here. But “though” is okay.
The blonde
seated across
“from her” is needed her. “Seated” is not always comfortable for “sitting” and I’d try to avoid it, because it implies she was seated there by someone else, as in “At the restaurant, the maitre d’ seated me by the window.” Better to say simply “The blonde opposite” anyway.
stared ahead vacantly as she fiddled with a music pod in
her lap.
I don’t think “music pod” is a thing. It’s an “MP3 player” or an “iPod”.
Here’s an example of a place where tighter would be better. I’d write “The blonde opposite fiddled with her iPod, expressionless” or similar. Allow the description to suggest the vacancy, rather than say she did something vacantly. Or …iPod, her face blank. Something like that.
A wire dangled down the side of her face.
As they do. Cut this sentence. It won’t be missed at all.
Lisa pulled her
phone from her purse to check the time and a guard was immediately by
her side.
In American writing particularly you must put a comma before “and”. Even I would because here you create something that doubtless has a Greek name that I don’t know, similar to a zeugma. (“I caught the train and a heavy cold” is a zeugma: the word “caught” has to be used in two senses for the two things conjoined. “He married in haste and a tuxedo” is another. You get the idea. Fowler called these “unequal yokefellows”. Here the sentence says that she pulled the phone from her purse to check the time and to check a guard… Simply, “and” misdirects the reader and this misdirection is easily fixed by placing a comma before “and”.) Some would use a semicolon. Not me. I don’t like them enough.
"Please turn off your phones." He said it loudly--for everyone's
benefit, Lisa assumed.
Okay. That’s just tolerable. I’m not sure that we’d know why he said it loudly unless she assumed it for us but it’s close to stating the obvious.
The blonde began to frown.
I think you either frown or you don’t and then you are frowning. If you say “the blonde frowned”, it sort of implies that she frowned and then stopped frowning, but it can’t be helped; one just doesn’t usually say “began to frown”. You could begin a frown and then stop before you were frowning.
"Excuse me?" Lisa strained to look up at his face. He wore sunglasses
even though dusk had fallen and the windows made a weak patchwork of
lavender light. Trees swayed in the distance, shrugging their bare
arms against the chill.
Okay. Nice try but do you shrug your arms against the chill or do you hug them around yourself?
"Why can't I use my phone? We were delayed
last week and I--"
"We ask that all electronics be shut off temporarily." The guard
stepped back a few feet and Lisa couldn't see him without twisting in
her seat.
The blonde took out her earpiece and dropped it on her lap.
"In her lap".
"What's going on?"
"I have no idea." Lisa slid her phone back into its pocket without
shutting it off. It would ring silently anyway, if at all. Would Jim
call if she were late?
"If she was late".
Use “if she were” for those times that she cannot conceivably be late and “if she was” for possible states that have not yet arrived. So “If I was to call you at six, would that be okay?” and “If I were to call you, I’d give you a piece of my mind” (but I won’t ever call you).
Probably not. He would simply assume she had
stood him up; he had already expressed little confidence in an
Internet date. The guard's footsteps receded.
I think in most trains that I use you would not hear his footsteps on account of the carpeting or because the floor just isn't made of a very "noisy" material.
"But I have to pick up my kid. Hey!" the blonde shouted at the guard.
"How long are we going to be stuck here?"
His footsteps approached. "We'll be back on schedule as soon as
possible, ma'am. We apologize for any inconvenience."
The blonde leaned toward Lisa. "What does that mean? Do you think
there's been a, you know, an attack?"
"Maybe," Lisa said. "It could be anything. They won't tell us. They
never do anymore.
Two words.
But this is the first time they said no
electronics."
“they’ve said” is natural. Try saying it out loud.
"Shit. My babysitter charges a dollar a minute if I come after six."
I really like how Paula has made us see these characters. There might have been a terrorist attack, or some other catastrophe, or whatever, but this girl’s mind turns to the financial implications (and not whether her child is safe and so on).
Lisa wondered how many passengers were on the train. Not many, she
figured. Next stop was the end of the line. Had there been an attack
nearby? Was an insidious cloud of gas
I don’t think gas can ever not be “insidious” in this sense.
And why does she wonder how many passengers are on the train? This doesn't seem to go anywhere.
on its way right now to choke
them, or worse? This would be a good time--she had totally fucked up
the third quarter reports. Lisa allowed herself a wry smile.
“allow yourself a wry smile” is a horrid cliché. Smiles should never be wry. Could you describe a wry smile? I couldn’t. I just know what the writer is expressing when they say that. I don’t even know that there actually is a face that corresponds to the description.
Tonight
wouldn't necessarily be a bad night to die.
Love it.
"And I don't even know what I'm going to do at Christmas," whined the
blonde. "She insists on taking two weeks off. Who does that? I can't
bring him to work with me. God."
Love this too.
Making a sympathetic noise
Not sure about this, although it does convey that she isn’t actually sympathetic.
, Lisa tried to figure out where the guard
was. She stood, crouching slightly so her head wouldn't be visible
over the seats.
She would look weird doing that, unless the seats were very high.
He was nowhere to be seen. She stood fully
“straightened up” gives the same idea a bit less awkwardly.
, grabbed
her purse, and stepped to the aisle.
“into the aisle”
As she walked to one end of the
car,
“the end of the car”. “The end” is obviously “one end” and is idiomatic.
she spied the guard's back in the next car
lose “car”.
I don't really like "spied" because it's a bit, erm, jolly, but I suppose it's okay.
, apparently talking to
seated passengers.
Just say “talking”. We understand that that’s what’s apparent to Lisa rather than necessarily the case, because we have Lisa’s POV.
Lisa abruptly turned and strode to the opposite
end.
“the other end of the carriage”.
Only the two women were in this car.
What two women? Do you mean Lisa and the blonde? I’d just cut this. Make it clear earlier in the piece that they are the only people in the car. "The blonde opposite, her only company in the car..." maybe.
Lisa pulled out her phone
and found Jim's number in the address book.
"They've blacked out the news and put on a dance marathon," he told
her. "I'm watching it at the bar."
"I'm thinking just to sneak out the door and get off," she whispered.
"I think we're near the mall.
I’m not sure why she thinks that.
I can walk over to Twelfth and get a
taxi."
Do you not say “take a cab” rather than “get a taxi”? I do and I’d find it odd to hear anything different because it’s the idiom.
I love though that he has more or less confirmed that something is going on (although not necessarily connected with her train) and she is still more worried about her date than anything else.
"That's crazy, Lisa. It's dark out. You can't walk across a field.
Don't worry about being late. We can skip the movie and-- "
"I'm not worried about our date," she hissed. "I just want to get the
hell off this train!"
Neatly expressing that they aren’t going to get along too well.
"I thought you were sensible."
LOL! It’s exactly what the dork would say, and you know she’s not going to like it.
Jim's voice held a note of reproach.
Yes, we know. The words reproached her. Avoid telling what you’ve just shown.
"In all these weeks we've chatted I never considered you a drama
queen. Just stay put and everything will be okay."
"How can you possibly know that?" Lisa ended the call before he could
answer.
I’ll bet she did. “Drama queen” is not what you call someone you want to have a nice date with.
Really, she didn't know why she had thought she liked him in
the first place.
The door opposite slid open and Lisa quickly tucked the phone in
“into”
her
coat pocket. She turned and pretended she had been gazing out the
window. Perhaps she should stay put. Be a good cooperative little
citizen.
You need more commas in there.
After all, she wasn't one of the Bad People, so there was
nothing to fear. Not from the guards anyway.
"You forgot your book."
Lisa turned to see the blonde holding her novel. "Thanks."
"What's it about? I never heard of it."
"A prison break, of sorts." Lisa smiled, taking the book.
"Metaphorically speaking. It's mostly about a divorce."
"Oh," the blonde said, nodding enthusiastically. "I'm divorced. What a
nightmare that was. But I got full custody and he has to pay, so it
all worked out."
"Great," Lisa murmured.
LOL. I can hear that! This exchange was so nicely observed that I smiled inside. This is exactly what a writer should do. You don’t need to make your characters do weird and wonderful things. You need to make them do what you have noticed people do.
The guard slipped through the door and strode toward their end of the
car.
Too much “striding” going on. Have him shuffle or creep or just walk, something that says what kind of guy he is, maybe. If he slouched, we’d form an idea. It’s just a case of using the word, making it work a bit.
"Please take a seat, folks. We'll be here a while longer." He had
taken off his shades and his eyes were dead coals.
Another cliché. Next time you see eyes that you think are like dead coals, think of another way to say it. Note it and use it when you’re tempted to go for “dead coals”.
Why don’t I like it? Eyes are all too often described as things that can be on fire, that smoulder, that burn, and so on. Avoid overworked metaphors and find fresh ones.
The women sat down next to the door.
Okay. I had to think a bit to work out that the blonde hadn’t just handed the book from her seat. So go back and say that she turned to see that the blonde had come over to hand her her book.
Lisa felt her phone slide out of
her pocket and heard it clunk on the floor.
"How much longer?" the blonde demanded. "What's happening?"
"We apologize for the inconvenience," the guard intoned methodically.
I don’t think you have to say “methodically” because if he “intones” it, I have the right impression.
"There's been a slight delay and we'll be back on schedule as soon as
possible. Excuse me, please." He punched in a code, shoved open the
rear door, and walked into the next car.
"What an asshole," the blonde said. "You'd think he could tell us something."
"They're not allowed." Lisa stuck her foot in the door the guard just
vacated, preventing it from closing completely.
He didn’t “vacate” the door, because “vacate” means “empty” and by extension “leave”. Just say “left through” instead. And you need to say “had just left through”. Prior actions require the past perfect.
"Still." The blonde pouted and turned to the window.
Lisa likewise stared at the black square. The trees were still out
there, somewhere.
No comma needed there.
Could she walk across a field in the dark, wearing
heels? The guard was gone from view now, swallowed up by the next car.
Rain began
“began to fall”. Or better “Rain began to plop solidly on…” You don’t need “down”. Rain doesn’t plop up.
, plopping solidly down on the train's roof like fat worms
splattering down from a dirty heaven.
You actually need to write “on the train’s roof, the drops like fat worms…” I know it seems neater to say that the rain is like fat worms but it doesn’t really work. You could say “in fat worms…” if you want a trimmer sentence. Metaphors do not demand “like” if they are clear enough. We know the rain is not really made of worms. Compare “her smile a red river in her face” with “her smile like a red river in her face”. The former is wonderfully trim but has nothing that is needed left out.
“Splattering”, by the way, is what raindrops do when they land, not how they fall. You cannot “splatter down”. Why not say “, spattering solidly on the train’s roof, fat worms plopped down from a dirty heaven”?
Note that I changed your “-ing” word to a “-ed” word. Why? Because you are not comparing the “plopping” thing with the “spattering” thing, but with a thing that has also plopped, having “spattered”.
"One, two, three…"
Perhaps I would have liked a slightly stronger resolution though. I think that in common with others, you went for short and sweet where more would have been a bit sweeter. I dunno though. I don’t feel as strongly about it here as I did with some others.
I repost the whole story below. The copyright remains with the author, whose moral right to be identified as the author I affirm by attaching her name.
A Slight Delay
Something shifted and she glanced up from her book. The train had
stopped, though they were miles from the next station. The blonde
seated across stared ahead vacantly as she fiddled with a music pod in
her lap. A wire dangled down the side of her face. Lisa pulled her
phone from her purse to check the time and a guard was immediately by
her side.
"Please turn off your phones." He said it loudly--for everyone's
benefit, Lisa assumed. The blonde began to frown.
"Excuse me?" Lisa strained to look up at his face. He wore sunglasses
even though dusk had fallen and the windows made a weak patchwork of
lavender light. Trees swayed in the distance, shrugging their bare
arms against the chill. "Why can't I use my phone? We were delayed
last week and I--"
"We ask that all electronics be shut off temporarily." The guard
stepped back a few feet and Lisa couldn't see him without twisting in
her seat.
The blonde took out her earpiece and dropped it on her lap. "What's going on?"
"I have no idea." Lisa slid her phone back into its pocket without
shutting it off. It would ring silently anyway, if at all. Would Jim
call if she were late? Probably not. He would simply assume she had
stood him up; he had already expressed little confidence in an
Internet date. The guard's footsteps receded.
"But I have to pick up my kid. Hey!" the blonde shouted at the guard.
"How long are we going to be stuck here?"
His footsteps approached. "We'll be back on schedule as soon as
possible, ma'am. We apologize for any inconvenience."
The blonde leaned toward Lisa. "What does that mean? Do you think
there's been a, you know, an attack?"
"Maybe," Lisa said. "It could be anything. They won't tell us. They
never do anymore. But this is the first time they said no
electronics."
"Shit. My babysitter charges a dollar a minute if I come after six."
Lisa wondered how many passengers were on the train. Not many, she
figured. Next stop was the end of the line. Had there been an attack
nearby? Was an insidious cloud of gas on its way right now to choke
them, or worse? This would be a good time--she had totally fucked up
the third quarter reports. Lisa allowed herself a wry smile. Tonight
wouldn't necessarily be a bad night to die.
"And I don't even know what I'm going to do at Christmas," whined the
blonde. "She insists on taking two weeks off. Who does that? I can't
bring him to work with me. God."
Making a sympathetic noise, Lisa tried to figure out where the guard
was. She stood, crouching slightly so her head wouldn't be visible
over the seats. He was nowhere to be seen. She stood fully, grabbed
her purse, and stepped to the aisle. As she walked to one end of the
car, she spied the guard's back in the next car, apparently talking to
seated passengers. Lisa abruptly turned and strode to the opposite
end. Only the two women were in this car. Lisa pulled out her phone
and found Jim's number in the address book.
"They've blacked out the news and put on a dance marathon," he told
her. "I'm watching it at the bar."
"I'm thinking just to sneak out the door and get off," she whispered.
"I think we're near the mall. I can walk over to Twelfth and get a
taxi."
"That's crazy, Lisa. It's dark out. You can't walk across a field.
Don't worry about being late. We can skip the movie and-- "
"I'm not worried about our date," she hissed. "I just want to get the
hell off this train!"
"I thought you were sensible." Jim's voice held a note of reproach.
"In all these weeks we've chatted I never considered you a drama
queen. Just stay put and everything will be okay."
"How can you possibly know that?" Lisa ended the call before he could
answer. Really, she didn't know why she had thought she liked him in
the first place.
The door opposite slid open and Lisa quickly tucked the phone in her
coat pocket. She turned and pretended she had been gazing out the
window. Perhaps she should stay put. Be a good cooperative little
citizen. After all, she wasn't one of the Bad People, so there was
nothing to fear. Not from the guards anyway.
"You forgot your book."
Lisa turned to see the blonde holding her novel. "Thanks."
"What's it about? I never heard of it."
"A prison break, of sorts." Lisa smiled, taking the book.
"Metaphorically speaking. It's mostly about a divorce."
"Oh," the blonde said, nodding enthusiastically. "I'm divorced. What a
nightmare that was. But I got full custody and he has to pay, so it
all worked out."
"Great," Lisa murmured.
The guard slipped through the door and strode toward their end of the
car. "Please take a seat, folks. We'll be here a while longer." He had
taken off his shades and his eyes were dead coals.
The women sat down next to the door. Lisa felt her phone slide out of
her pocket and heard it clunk on the floor.
"How much longer?" the blonde demanded. "What's happening?"
"We apologize for the inconvenience," the guard intoned methodically.
"There's been a slight delay and we'll be back on schedule as soon as
possible. Excuse me, please." He punched in a code, shoved open the
rear door, and walked into the next car.
"What an asshole," the blonde said. "You'd think he could tell us something."
"They're not allowed." Lisa stuck her foot in the door the guard just
vacated, preventing it from closing completely.
"Still." The blonde pouted and turned to the window.
Lisa likewise stared at the black square. The trees were still out
there, somewhere. Could she walk across a field in the dark, wearing
heels? The guard was gone from view now, swallowed up by the next car.
Rain began, plopping solidly down on the train's roof like fat worms
splattering down from a dirty heaven.
"One, two, three…"
Paula Light 2006
Workshop: Gretel
When I am editing, the easiest thing to do is to fix a writer’s errors in English. It’s no problem to make them write properly because most often a way to express themselves makes itself obvious (I don’t say
the way because dissimilarly to some other editors, I don’t feel there is only one way to say a thing).
What is difficult though is to fix tone. By tone, I do not mean register. If someone’s language is inappropriate to the setting or context, that’s not difficult to put right. If they are not formal enough, for instance, you choose a more formal structure, a stiffer word. An instance in Sal’s piece is this: “So were the stations,
once you got beneath ground.” Given that she is aiming for at least well-styled English, that “got” should be “were”. (Not the only problem with that sentence, which was uncharacteristically bad.)
What I mean is that a piece has feel: it does not just convey an action but it conveys a sense of that action. Stories say something. The good short story makes an observation of how we are, but at the same time how we feel about how we are. Often, a piece of short fiction is a sharp piece of moral judgement; other times, it presents questions rather than answers. Either way, it presents a view. Think about it when you are reading what you consider to be a great short story. It will not just be presenting an observation of human nature; it will be describing what that observation means. This does not entail the story’s stopping and presenting a lecture in philosophy. The judgement, the view, is conveyed by the piece’s tone.
So when I say that Sal’s piece lacked tone, this is what I mean. When I have read Sal’s blog, which I do on occasion but not as often as I might if her writing did not have this… I hesitate to call it a flaw because that seems harsh, I have felt that her observation is good but she lacks engagement. Even in her food reviews, where one would expect passion, Sal is detached. I sometimes think, make me feel what you feel and you would hit the notes you aim for. But how to do it? It’s not easy to put right. It’s the element of writing that comes naturally to those who can do it but is so hard for those who can’t. Or won’t. In Sal’s case, I think it’s more a won’t. I have seen writing from her that has that engagement, and it’s very good. She wrote a piece about her brother that was better than anything else I’ve seen from her. I think Sal has doubts about her writing but if she hit that pitch often, they would be dispelled.
I have to say, and I give the caveat up front that I am not particularly well versed in the genre, that it strikes me that Sal’s unwillingness in particular to make moral judgements will tend to make her mysteries – tales that are often highly concerned with morality – hollow and unengaging. (I am guessing because she doesn’t share her fiction writing with me.) Her slightly flat writing would also tend not to make for good crime writing, which it strikes me relies on tautness and energy to push it along. You rarely want to be able to stop and think in a mystery because they rely on events’ playing out in a way that doesn’t always bear scrutiny.
I would not say any of this if I didn’t feel that Sal could fix this problem and write a genuinely good piece of fiction. I’m not sure it should be a mystery, at least not the Lawrence Block type. And I am not suggesting either that Sal must do what I sometimes do: lead the reader by the nose and relentlessly batter them with my view. (I’ve been writing cautionary fiction, which requires that to some extent. Mind you, I felt this would have worked better as a caution.)
To the point. In Gretel, I felt that here we have a situation that demands a view. Without it, you have a story that can be set out in a sentence. What does Sal feel about the granny’s abandonment (sorry to give away the twist but I assume people read the story first to work out what they think about it before they read what I think)? What possibilities for feeling about it? She seems detached to me, even though she has used the first person. Is she angry? Sad? Does she feel there is a tragedy that we can no longer cope, that we are not supported, when faced with these problems in life?
By settling for what she did, which was neat enough, Sal passed up a chance. It was clever to have the narrator’s observation of the daughter be so wrong, but I found it profoundly unsatisfying. Worst of all, it did have tone! But I found it leadenfooted. The character, the narrator, made judgements, but the author, I felt did not.
It boils down to this: art is not a mirror. A piece of art does not merely represent. The things it concerns represent themselves. Art interprets. It is mediated by the artist and if it is not, it is not art. What does “mediated” mean? Imagine you are involved in a dispute and the parties have agreed to use a mediator. Instead of presenting your grievances to one another just so, you use a third party who is able both to extract the core from your grievance (its meaning, if you like) and to suggest what view the parties could have of it (and how to resolve it). When you experience a piece of art, you do not look at a thing, an event or whatever, you look at how the artist presents it. The artist is a filter and a refractor. You have their spin.
When I look at “art” by people like Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, I am distinctly unimpressed. Why? Because when Hirst presents a decaying cow, he presents a decaying cow. He says “you figure it out”. But I say “I already figure stuff out. That’s life. But art is about presenting ways of figuring things out.” Art is about how you could feel, not about what you already know you feel. (I don’t discount the power of art that makes you stop and think “that’s what I’ve always felt about that”, which is a different thing: here, the art has presented you with a possibility that strikes a chord; it has not left the interpretation to you.)
At the same time, when I see a technically correct but soulless landscape or still life, I have the same feeling: there is no art in the mirroring of what there is.
Gretel
Mid-July. We were having an unseasonable heat wave.
I don’t mind beginning with “Mid-July.” It’s sort of a twist on “Once upon a time…” But I’m not keen on reading too much about the weather.
A key to opening a short story is to pose questions for the reader. They will want to read on to find out the answers to the questions. Here, my only question is “why the fuck do I care about the weather?” When I read on, I find out that I actually don’t. It doesn’t have any bearing on the story. It would have been better to open with the scene in the train: “We were sweating…” (who are we?) or description of passengers “Sweat from a fat man’s brow was bouncing from the vinyl of the vacant seat he spilled into…” or anything that a/ dumps us into it and b/ makes us start thinking.
In the second sentence, I like “heatwave” as one word. It looks odd as two. I have never liked "unseasonable". It's one of those egregious words that have, through usage, become part of the language, but defy all reason. A pedant's heart sinks when they see that. It can't be helped though, and it's useful, I suppose, that "seasonable" and "seasonal" express different things.
Samuel Clemens is
said to have said that the coldest winter he ever spent was a summer in
San Francisco.
This is just too clever clever. Did he say as “Samuel Clemens”? Was he reported as Samuel Clemens’ saying it? I rather doubt it. “Said to have said…” is horribly convoluted. Say “They say Mark Twain said…” or just “Mark Twain said… or so they say”
Well, this wasn't one of those summers. The heat had been
in the mid-nineties for at least five days and we were all sick and
tired of it. Sweltering, we all were. Cranky.
Yeah okay. If this had anything to do with the story, I’d not mind the overkill. But the heat is nothing to do with it!
Avoid scenesetting. It simply robs a story of dynamism. You need to weave detail into your fiction, not replace your story with it.
The trains were air-conditioned and cool, though.
Two things here. If the trains are “air-conditioned”, we assume they are cool. It would only be noteworthy if the aircon wasn’t working, so they weren’t. Take care not to tell the reader things they can work out for themselves. For instance, if we are sick and tired of the heat, we are cranky, because the two ideas describe the same thing only slightly differently. The reader is given nothing by the third adjective. The second thing is minor: do not comma off “though”.
I know you think you should. It seems right. You’d comma off “however” here. But “though” works like an adverb such as “lately” or “often”. Do you write “I haven’t seen him, lately”? If you do, stop. (I know that “though” is not the same kind of thing as “lately”. I chose the latter to demonstrate the point. Replace it with “otherwise” and you’ll see it. If you comma off “otherwise”, stop.)
So were the stations,
once you got beneath ground.
I have to admit to chuckling when I read this, if only because I just recently read Partridge’s thoughts on “below”, “under” and “beneath”. To be “beneath ground” is to be buried, and by extension, dead. Use “under ground”, which is the idiom (as in “underground railway” of course). “Below ground” implies that there is ground above you but not below you, so reads a little oddly, but would just about work.
I do not like “so” here, although it isn’t strictly incorrect. I’d use “as”, which is the correct word for comparisons of actions of this type. “So” usually means “in the same way” of actions, and is just slightly uncomfortable when used of states. (I prefer “He is ugly. As is she” to “He is ugly. So is she.” But it’s close.) This is a nice distinction though. I wouldn’t correct it.
I would though correct “got” to “were”. Sal’s writing is reasonably formal and literate. She should definitely eschew vulgarities like “got”, simply because it strikes the wrong note.
I saw the two women as I got on
Particularly so if you’re going to use it again a sentence later! “Boarded” feels odd for light rail. “Hopped on”? “caught”? “took”?
BART at the San Bruno station. I was
headed back downtown to our unairconditioned office. The meeting in San
Bruno had not gone well. The client refused to give us a week extra even
after I explained the circumstances. She'd laid down the law about
contracts and penalties for noncompliance. No, it hadn't been a good
meeting.
Okay. So you’re a businesswoman. But again you didn’t really take this anywhere. It’s why you’re on the train but it doesn’t set you out as a character who… well, this would be “makes the moral judgement you go on to make”.
I dropped into the seat across from them
Okay, I get what you’re saying, but I did picture you swinging on the railing and almost parachuting into the seat.
: the middle-aged woman and the
older woman sitting next to her. The baggage at their feet indicated
that. Don’t omit it here.
they'd got on
Again, I much prefer “boarded” or “caught the train” here.
at the airport, not the Millbrae station.
TMI. I don’t know why I’d think they’d boarded at “Millbrae” and I don’t care.
Their warm clothes seconded my guess that they'd just arrived.
You can’t say this! Because there is the idiom “to second guess someone”, this reads horribly. Just say “confirmed”.
Wherever
they'd flown in from, the temps
No. ”Temps” are office workers.
were considerably cooler than those
everyone in town had been complaining about for days. Montana maybe?
Okay. That’s a nice bit of humanising of the narrator because idly speculating about where people have been on holiday is a thing we all do.
She
Who? You’ve gone from “they” to “she”. Although the sentence makes clear who “she” is, it’s poor writing to leave the reader struggling for sense by using an unclear referent. Say “The younger woman…”
might have been in her mid-forties. More likely she was in her early
fifties, well-preserved and trying hard to stay that way.
I feel this was just too much. She might have been in her forties but she was probably in her fifties… ho hum. It is of no consequence to us, is it? And you are pretty much conveying the same thing twice. Just say “She was probably in her early fifties, but well preserved and trying hard to stay that way” or “she was probably in her fifties but trying to pass as ten years younger” (which has a nice air of judgement in it).
No hyphen in “well preserved” when you use it after the noun. “Well” is just an adverb like any other. It is only hyphenated with the adjective it describes when both are before the noun because of the possibility of confusion with the idea of “well (healthy) and preserved”.
Her traveling
clothes were fashionable, neither trendy nor expensive. Her makeup was
carefully applied. Her colorful handknit sweater was wool
I don’t know why I prefer “woolen” but I do. Yet I wouldn’t write “silken”…
But yes, I’d write “a woollen jumper” but a “silk blouse”. I just do. “Silken” means “silk-like” for me rather than “of silk”.
, not silk or
cashmere. She wore dark slacks and sensible leather flats. She probably
bought her clothes at Macy's. On sale.
Is Macy’s a cheap department store? I guess it is. You are clearly not writing for an international market!
The old woman was dressed simply in a cotton print dress with a
lightweight matching jacket. Her fine, white hair was combed back in
loose curls. A cane leaned against the baggage she'd brought on board.
Her ankles were swollen, bulging over the sides of the canvas slipon
shoes she wore. Her feet must hurt. She looked like a farmer's wife
dressed up to take a trip into the big city. Maybe she was.
The old woman
You could use “she” here.
was neat enough. She didn't have drool down her chin or
spills on her front, but she seemed absent, not altogether there. Maybe
it was the way she didn't look at me when I sat down across from them.
This is horribly informal and won’t do. You might say this but you absolutely cannot write it. You must append “that gave me that impression”. That’s understood in speech, and there wouldn’t be any confusion, but writing demands less elision, more precision.
Maybe it was the way she stared down and twisted the gold band on one of
her arthritic fingers. The fifty-something traveling companion glanced
at me as I sat down, then looked away.
You must say “then she looked away”, because this says that you sit down and then look away. In any case, you need not say it at all. You cannot “glance” at someone without then looking away. You would be staring if you didn’t.
I pulled my half-read Economist out and settled in for the short trip
in.
I think you have to say “back” or “into town”.
I didn't even want to think about how I was going to explain to my
unsympathetic boss why we were being held to the original deliverables.
You need not say he is “unsympathetic”. We infer that from your concern about having to explain.
"Where are we going, dear?"
"Into town."
"Is it time for my school to start again?"
"Yes, pretty soon now."
"Am I staying with Uncle Buster again?"
"Yes. He and Aunt Lois are looking forward to seeing you."
"Are they going to make me take care of my bratty cousins again?"
"We'll talk about it when we get there."
"Who are you again?"
"Your daughter, Mom. I'm your daughter."
"Oh. ... I knew that ..."
There was silence for a few minutes. We reached the South City station.
"Where are we going, dear?"
"Into town."
"Is it time for school to start again?"
"Pretty soon now."
"Am I staying with Uncle Buster?"
The conversation looped again. And again.
Okay. Given that you’ve shown its looping, this is a bit redundant. I’d rather have put “And so it went, the same conversation, beginning again at each station.” Or something like that.
Colma station.
I don't know how the daughter had the patience to answer the same
questions over and over again, but answer them she did, quietly,
patiently.
That’s one too many “patient”s for one sentence.
Each time she gave the same answers to the same questions as
though she was hearing them and answering them for the first time.
Yes, we know. You showed us that.
Each
time with the litany over, the old woman quieted down, reassured, her
questions answered, content.
A few minutes later she'd start again.
I think you get bogged down in here, struggling to express that they went through this routine.
The repetition didn't seem to bother the daughter. I would've strangled
the old woman myself
This is a slightly wrong construction because it says that you would do the strangling yourself rather than leave it to someone else, not that if it were you, you'd strangle her. A comma before "myself", or simply saying "In her shoes...", "If she were my mother..." or similar.
, but her daughter was an angel. So patient.
Again. I’d just cut from the dialogue up to here, I think.
So
unbelievably patient. The good daughter. I wish I had that in me, but I
don't. If I'd been expected to be the good daughter and answer questions
over and over, I'd have taken the old fool out in the woods and left her
to die. Lucky for me my mother is dead.
Okay. So the narrator presents her view. But why don’t I think that what this represents Sal’s presenting “tone”?
It’s simply this: the character has not been drawn sufficiently well for me to be clear whether Sal approves or agrees! Maybe Sal would leave her mother out in the woods in this situation. I don’t know because she has not delineated her character and judged her. Do you see what I mean?
How would I have approached this? I would not have written it in the first person, or if I did, I would have allowed my narrator to be more strongly toned. She would have had something to say about the person she was negotiating with – something stronger, indicating better what kind of judgement she is prone to making. She would have taken a tone when describing the younger woman: the makeup would have been “more carefully applied than I would have bothered with for myself” or “applied in that way ageing women do to try to convince us that they have a face worth painting”.
Daly City station.
24th and Mission.
At the Civic Center station the daughter picked up her bag. "I'll be
back in just a minute, Mom. Stay right there. Don't move. I'll be right
back. I need to use the bathroom."
"All right, dear. I'll wait."
The old woman looked down at her hands in her lap, then up at the
advertisements above the windows. She looked back down at her twisting
fingers, and waited.
There are no bathrooms on BART.
Nice.
The train started up again. Next stop: Powell Street.
I glanced out the window at Powell Street and saw the daughter getting
off
“leaving”?
the train with her bag in hand.
Either “with bag in hand” or “with her bag in her hand”.
She'd taken off the bright green and
aqua handknit sweater I'd noticed earlier
Why do you mention the colours only now though? Better to give colours earlier and use “colorful” here.
and had it slung over her arm
as she hurried up the escalator.
Unseasonably hot weather.
Okay. I’m guessing you want us to think “yes but she’s not taking it off because it’s unseasonable.”
I looked across the aisle. The old woman was still waiting, her bag and
cane at her feet.
Montgomery station.
I put my Economist back in my briefcase. The Embarcadero station was
next. My stop.
I got off.
I looked back in the train car window. I could see the old woman,
sitting quietly. Waiting.
Someone would notice eventually.
Okay, that worked, I guess. I’d have preferred an impact ending. Leave us with a moral, that type of thing.
Perhaps you could note that she is waiting to begin her routine again. This indicates that the narrator has an awareness, however dim, of the destruction being deserted will bring to her world but also how trivial it will feel to the woman.
Also, I would much have preferred not to see the younger woman again after she says she’s going to the bathroom. It would have been better to have the old woman deserted at the stop the narrator leaves the train and for the narrator then to see the old woman, alone, moving off into the distance.
I repost the whole story below. The copyright remains with the author, whose moral right to be identified as the author I affirm by attaching her name.
Gretel
Mid-July. We were having an unseasonable heat wave. Samuel Clemens is
said to have said that the coldest winter he ever spent was a summer in
San Francisco. Well, this wasn't one of those summers. The heat had been
in the mid-nineties for at least five days and we were all sick and
tired of it. Sweltering, we all were. Cranky.
The trains were air-conditioned and cool, though. So were the stations,
once you got beneath ground.
I saw the two women as I got on BART at the San Bruno station. I was
headed back downtown to our unairconditioned office. The meeting in San
Bruno had not gone well. The client refused to give us a week extra even
after I explained the circumstances. She'd laid down the law about
contracts and penalties for noncompliance. No, it hadn't been a good
meeting.
I dropped into the seat across from them: the middle-aged woman and the
older woman sitting next to her. The baggage at their feet indicated
they'd got on at the airport, not the Millbrae station.
Their warm clothes seconded my guess that they'd just arrived. Wherever
they'd flown in from, the temps were considerably cooler than those
everyone in town had been complaining about for days. Montana maybe?
She might have been in her mid-forties. More likely she was in her early
fifties, well-preserved and trying hard to stay that way. Her traveling
clothes were fashionable, neither trendy nor expensive. Her makeup was
carefully applied. Her colorful handknit sweater was wool, not silk or
cashmere. She wore dark slacks and sensible leather flats. She probably
bought her clothes at Macy's. On sale.
The old woman was dressed simply in a cotton print dress with a
lightweight matching jacket. Her fine, white hair was combed back in
loose curls. A cane leaned against the baggage she'd brought on board.
Her ankles were swollen, bulging over the sides of the canvas slipon
shoes she wore. Her feet must hurt. She looked like a farmer's wife
dressed up to take a trip into the big city. Maybe she was.
The old woman was neat enough. She didn't have drool down her chin or
spills on her front, but she seemed absent, not altogether there. Maybe
it was the way she didn't look at me when I sat down across from them.
Maybe it was the way she stared down and twisted the gold band on one of
her arthritic fingers. The fifty-something traveling companion glanced
at me as I sat down, then looked away.
I pulled my half-read Economist out and settled in for the short trip
in. I didn't even want to think about how I was going to explain to my
unsympathetic boss why we were being held to the original deliverables.
"Where are we going, dear?"
"Into town."
"Is it time for my school to start again?"
"Yes, pretty soon now."
"Am I staying with Uncle Buster again?"
"Yes. He and Aunt Lois are looking forward to seeing you."
"Are they going to make me take care of my bratty cousins again?"
"We'll talk about it when we get there."
"Who are you again?"
"Your daughter, Mom. I'm your daughter."
"Oh. ... I knew that ..."
There was silence for a few minutes. We reached the South City station.
"Where are we going, dear?"
"Into town."
"Is it time for school to start again?"
"Pretty soon now."
"Am I staying with Uncle Buster?"
The conversation looped again. And again.
Colma station.
I don't know how the daughter had the patience to answer the same
questions over and over again, but answer them she did, quietly,
patiently. Each time she gave the same answers to the same questions as
though she was hearing them and answering them for the first time. Each
time with the litany over, the old woman quieted down, reassured, her
questions answered, content.
A few minutes later she'd start again.
The repetition didn't seem to bother the daughter. I would've strangled
the old woman myself, but her daughter was an angel. So patient. So
unbelievably patient. The good daughter. I wish I had that in me, but I
don't. If I'd been expected to be the good daughter and answer questions
over and over, I'd have taken the old fool out in the woods and left her
to die. Lucky for me my mother is dead.
Daly City station.
24th and Mission.
At the Civic Center station the daughter picked up her bag. "I'll be
back in just a minute, Mom. Stay right there. Don't move. I'll be right
back. I need to use the bathroom."
"All right, dear. I'll wait."
The old woman looked down at her hands in her lap, then up at the
advertisements above the windows. She looked back down at her twisting
fingers, and waited.
There are no bathrooms on BART.
The train started up again. Next stop: Powell Street.
I glanced out the window at Powell Street and saw the daughter getting
off the train with her bag in hand. She'd taken off the bright green and
aqua handknit sweater I'd noticed earlier and had it slung over her arm
as she hurried up the escalator.
Unseasonably hot weather.
I looked across the aisle. The old woman was still waiting, her bag and
cane at her feet.
Montgomery station.
I put my Economist back in my briefcase. The Embarcadero station was
next. My stop.
I got off.
I looked back in the train car window. I could see the old woman,
sitting quietly. Waiting.
Someone would notice eventually.
Sal Towse 2006
Two monotone flops
So for once the key hand on a Friday night is one I won. Two I won, because they were similar.
A few weeks ago, I noted that R, a weak player who will often call with absolutely nothing (an even worse trait in no limit than in limit, where it is commoner) and who likes the big bluffs over the small, had made a mistake in showing me a bluff that he had pulled on me. (The big bluff, I should explain, is the all in push when you have raised, rather than the potsized bet that apes having a decent hand. I make the latter a fair bit but the first requires a strong read before you try it for the obvious reason that your tourney is over if you do it at the wrong time.)
So I have T6 in the big blind and I see the flop for just the blind. It comes QT6, all spades. In limit, I would not fear this flop and would be looking to build the pot. But sometimes what is a fine flop in limit is a disaster in no limit, and being alive to these spots is essential if you want to win. So R bets out and I raise. I am thinking when he bets that he might have an ace. I think I am almost certainly ahead. I raised quite a nice amount, enough to make chasing the flush draw unviable if he has a spade, but not so much that a loose player won't consider it callable.
He pushes.
This unequivocally says that he has flopped the flush. I forget the exact size of our stacks but I have him covered, just, and we both have about the average for the game. So this is a big hand. If I call and he has it, I have four outs and if I miss, I'm more or less done in this tourney.
But does he have it? I call to the mind the bluff of a few weeks ago. He made it on a danger flop: not a flush board but a straight was possible and I had a hand but not one I'd bet my life on. He had bet out and I had raised. I folded to his push and he showed Q2, a nothing hand that had not in any way connected with the board. I did not feel bad about being bluffed. It's part of the game. I felt it was a terrible error to let me know though. Some players can't seem to help it: they have to let you know how very clever they are. Me, I prefer for them not to know when I've outsmarted them, although they know I think about the game, and I'm clearly a better player than most, if not all, of those I play on Friday nights.
It struck me that the betting had gone the same way on this hand and he might consider this a great setup for the bluff. It didn't matter to me that I had two pair. If he was bluffing, any pair would be beating him most likely, so the strength of my hand was irrelevant. I either put him on a bluff and called, or folded and saved my stack.
I called. He showed 95. I had read him perfectly. The turn was a king, which gave him a gutty, but the poker gods had decided that my great call should be rewarded, we rivered a 3 and he was done.
Later, threehanded with L, a woman who plays predictably, whose favourite move is to check and call on the flop with a big hand and then raise it on the turn (hilarious when no one bets for her on the flop because she will not then check the turn but always bets an amount that screams "I tried to slowplay"), and W, the host, who has learned some lessons about the game (play tight in early position, looser when you have position; aggression is good) but not others (small pairs are not good to raise at full tables; don't be weak -- having raised pf with a pair of 9s, a decent enough hand, he had checked when he flopped a king, then bet a brick on the turn, allowing R to see a river fairly cheaply (although too expensively for anyone with a clue) and cried like a smacked baby when R rivered an ace to pair the one in his hand -- a tough player will bet the flop, not automatically assume that his one opponent has the scare card), I raised it pf with AsKc. I didn't make a huge raise, mostly because I had confused how the action was, and felt obliged to make the bet I had originally stated. Anyway, L called, as she does, and we took the flop. K86, all spades. I bet out, confident that I was ahead and hoping she would call me with K9+, which would be a likely hand for her. She raised. I pushed it all in.
Was this a terrible move? Couldn't she have flopped a flush? Well yes, she could. I figured it was quite likely she had paired her king, perhaps with a big spade, had a medium pair, or was trying a bluff. Because I hadn't raised much preflop, it would be reasonable to put me on Ax or a small pair and to think that a pair of kings would be good. Why did I push? Because I thought I had a very good chance of being called by a worse hand. I have seen L make some very poor calls in the past. I felt that the chance she had a flush was about 30% (and the chances of her bluffing and having a pair about the same). Okay, if she did, I was behind, but I would have seven outs twice to improve to beat her. So it was about 2 to 1 that she was ahead, and 2.6 to 1 that if she was, I would catch up. With the dead money in the pot, I thought this was a thin push. There was some chance that she didn't have the flush but had K8 or K6. This would increase the chances that I was behind but give me more outs to catch up (15 on the turn, 18 on the river), making me a clear favourite.
But why take the chance? Well, I had the big stack. Even if she called and beat me, I would not be close to elimination. She would take the chip lead, but I would be close to W in chip count. Against these weak players, I was confident I could win from that position.
And why did I think it quite unlikely she had the flush? Well, threehanded, the chances that your only calling opponent happens to have the suit that flops monotone are pretty slim, particularly when you hold a card of that suit. A spade, yes, maybe. Two, not likely.
Unlikely or otherwise, she showed JT suited in spades. Ouch. But the poker gods had decided that the stallion would get his oats. I rivered the 2 of spades for the nut flush and that was that.
W was barely even competition HU. When I first made it to the last two on a Friday night, I had never played HU in any money game. I had no idea how to play and was timid and weak. He had a bigger stack and ran over me. I'm a better player now and one area I have improved in is HU. And I had a huge chip advantage.
W tried to get a bit tricky. A couple of times he limped and then pushed all in when I raised. I laughed it off because I had been expecting that. I knew that this was going to be his downfall. In a very short stack HU, you have to try to get doubled up. It's no use chipping away, stealing small bets or blinds. You are risking too much because the big stack need only wait for something decent to bust you with.
Some players in a stack as big as I had would call an all in with just about any two, but the blinds were still low enough for there to be no pressure. I figured he was raising light (after a couple of successes he was looking to steal any bet I made) but I didn't need to let him double up by calling with trash. I reckoned that I could beat him by simply waiting for the kind of hand I might play from in limit and call with that. So when I woke up with A8s on the button, a strong hand HU, I figured that would do it. I limped, letting him think that he could steal the chips once more, and when he pushed, it was an easy call. He had JTs, the same suit as mine as it happens, just to break his heart.
The poker gods, who have been kicking me about by letting all sorts of donkey suck out on me recently, decided that I would be permitted to enjoy my glory moment. I flopped two pair and the turn was a brick, killing any chance he might have had.
About ourselves
So I am at the school giving a "workshop" on how books get made. God knows why I agreed to do it; it's like my worst nightmare: put me in front of a small, uninterested crowd and talk about something that bores me shitless to do, let alone explain.
But curiously, as is so often the case, I found I was quite good at doing what I feared. The fear makes me react in the wrong way sometimes, so that I will act like a prick when I'm nervous, but this time I was able to relax. Because I had nothing prepared and was already convinced it would be a disaster and all the kids would go home and tell their mothers how much I sucked, I was cool with it. (I should explain that I don't actually care that the mothers of Mansfield think I suck at giving workshops: I suffer from entirely irrational fears, which given how capable I am at reasoning is a fucking pain in the arse.)
I decided the kids would have more fun if I let them talk about themselves, their aspirations, whatever. They like that. Well, who doesn't? We all like having someone be interested in us. And I like being interested in people.
New people are a thrill, particularly if they will talk about themselves beyond the banal. What do they fear? What do they love? What do they want? You will never bore me if you talk to me about who you
are, not who you're projecting or think I want you to be.
I was delighted in giving my workshop to have a piece from someone I had never "met" before (it seems a bit strange to talk about meeting people online when you'll never physically meet them in this lifetime). I expect she'll be less delighted when I ask her something deeply personal that will make her blush beetroot-coloured but I enjoy doing that too. And you know, stepping over the line is nearly always fruitful. People have so much more to offer when they let their guard down and show you what they have. I am always willing to know someone better, to know more about them, because I have an abiding faith in people, a belief that they are worth more than they credit, much more in many cases, that they are worthwhile if they only know how to let themselves be. Ultimately, I am willing to find something to love in them.
What do I like?
I was reading this woman's blog and she was saying that she wanted a man to make her feel safe, to control and guide her. I was already measuring myself up for the role. Which is curious because I don't really like the kind of person who needs to be told what to think.
Or do I? I don't think I've ever thought about what I do or don't like. I know it when I see it. Some guys will say, I like blondes, or I like petite women, or I like them big and bouncy. But I cannot make a picture of what I like. I never have been able to. There are elements in people that I nearly always respond to: there isn't an intelligent, forthright woman I've met that I haven't liked and I get particularly weak-kneed near women who are feminine and upper-class (without too much whiff of horse, iykwim).
I like knowing I've made an impression. That's a product of vanity, I suppose. But it means I want people to do what I want, not because I have an urge to control them, but because it's a token of my meaning enough to them for them to want to please me. I always wanted to be loved or hated but not ignored. I don't know why. I cannot reconcile it with being shy. Maybe I have a badly askew understanding of how I should relate to the world. Well, there's no maybe there, is there? I don't relate to the world at all. I just watch it pass by and hope it harms me less rather than more.
Which is curious. If you had a problem, you probably couldn't find anyone better to talk it through with. I understand relationships and people, just not my relationships and not my people. If I could stand back and look at myself as if I were someone else...
Some people can. They are able to think about themselves in the third person without effort. They are generally successful in life because when they think about themselves, they are able to be detached. In most things, detachment is key to clearheaded thought.
***
Because I am on the cusp of officially being old, I have been thinking some about not finding what you want. I have begun to fear that I will end my life without ever experiencing some of what I wanted. That I will not be published is obviously at the forefront of that thinking. I cannot imagine writing anything else, let alone being published, so I am pessimistic on that score. I feel that it has been my curse: to be good enough but not
full enough to have made it. I will not be rich. Which is a pity, because I'd be good at it. I hate working for a living. I've never found anything I actually enjoyed doing, and I wouldn't know where to begin to look. I won't ever have sex that fulfils me. I don't even know what it would be or who it would be with. I don't know whether it even exists. I wonder how many of us that is true for? Our opportunities are limited, for some more so than others, and because we are not sure what it could be and whether we've exhausted the possibilities, we are not sure whether we've done the most satisfying thing for us, or whether there could have been more but we never got to it.
I will never be joyful. I do not know whether I can. Of course, I think I could, and, like anyone, I have moments of joy. But I can never look at my life and think, I am joyful. If I had a god, I could not thank it. If I knew how to fix that, I would. Above all else, I hope to become joyful before I die. Imagine how good I will be to know if I do! You will be so glad you encountered me.
But how do you find joy? I am not looking for resignation, so please don't prescribe it. I know how to become resigned but it's not the same thing. But maybe resignation is the first step? I'm going to think about it when I'm in China. It's apt because Eastern beliefs begin with resignation. Certainly they believe it's the door to joy, or at least to the nearest to joy a being can have.
When I say "being", I mean all beings, not just us. I don't think cats enjoy themselves as such. I don't think they distinguish joy from suffering. I think that is only possible if you can refer one event to another. Cats can't. They do not have memories in that sense. Cats are resigned to it though, by default.
Sometimes, sitting on the deck of a boat, I'll watch a dolphin leap from the water. It looks like joy, to be free to swim. It looks like he's loving it, every moment. But I know that the dolphin does not know how not to love it. He is not even resigned to it; he simply does not know any other way to be. Can we get there? I would if I could, maybe, but I do not even know where the path begins. And if I were there, would that be joy?
Probably not, but who is getting more out of his life? The dolphin, no question.
Bitzes
When
Max Hastings thinks you're demented, you know you've gone wrong somewhere.
The idea of a coordinated Islamic threat is transparently ridiculous but it's a sad truth that many Americans prefer easy explanations to thinking. Well, many people of all sorts do, which is one reason there is an Islamist problem at all.
***
I had an email today with corrections the indexer found in my financial markets book. Fuck me. They're queueing up to find things wrong with the job I did on that. But how bad was the proofreader? I find they either way overdo it or way underdo it. This one was under. It beats the guy who make about 50 corrections a page to a web chapter of an accountancy book. I think I might have got him the boot. Inadvertently, but he deserved it. Proofreaders aren't meant to re-edit text and they certainly aren't meant to do it as hamfistedly as he did.
I'm about edited out. Those who are awaiting critiques of their pieces I hope will forgive me. I did a 16-hour day yesterday, and it's 5pm and I'm about to do the second half of today. I had to do the groceries, so I took a couple of hours off. Now it's nose to the grindstone for five or six hours. I just have a lot on.
I did read the pieces though, and I do have a general idea of what I want to say. And if anyone is still mulling over submitting something, please don't be put off. I won't be so busy once I've done a chunk of the book on contracts for difference that I have to get finished before I go away.
***
I recently downloaded
Gnu backgammon, and I delight in playing the PC. (I'd play real people if I knew any; even Mrs Z if I could find my set.) I used to play backgammon quite a bit, and I'm fairly useful in an untutored way. (I knew those pattern recognition skills would come in handy some way or other.) I want to learn to play properly but I'm having difficulty tracking down a copy of Magriel. (Paul Magriel -- X22 as he's known -- wrote the bible of backgammon some years ago.) I read a book of problems by Bill Robertie, and that piqued my interest. I can fairly easily beat the computer if I set it to "casual player" (which is a very easy level). I might step up to the next level, which is crap club player or something.
If anyone passes this by and wants a game... well, you know the addy. And if you want a free computer version of backgammon, Gnu is excellent. It has an uncanny knack of hitting great rolls: if it needs just one number to hurt me, it often gets it, and then tells me in the analysis that I was lucky, the cheeky git.
***
When one looks at the seemingly impossible problems of the world, it's salutary to consider that some of those of the past, equally impossible, have at least begun to be resolved. It gladdens the heart that Germany, once hell on earth for Jews, has normalised sufficiently that
rabbis can be ordained there.
Is it possible that relations between the Jews and Arabs will normalise to the point at which they can coexist in the way the French and English, say, do?
I think people fight more when they feel they have nothing much to lose and something to gain. (Not an original or deep thought, I know, but sometimes forgotten in analysing the Middle East and other points Muslim.) Or when they find someone other to hate. Englishpeople stopped hating the French when we had the Germans to despise, and since the demise of the Nazis, we've smoothly moved on to blacks and now Muslims. We are richer though, so the hatred we have to spare is less.
***
I have been rereading Partridge's Usage and abusage (that's what I do for fun, folks, read up on the English language). Partridge is occasionally hilariously precious about language, awfully correct and vairy proper. He'd hate that "very" and probably shoot me dead for the "awfully". You get the picture.
He'd knock me down for that too.
I won't tell you what Partridge says about "hoi polloi" but let's say that if I'm crossed on that score again, the crosser is going to feel not just my scorn but the withering lash of Partridge's driest of dry wit.
Why bother with this stuff? Well, I find that a browse through Partridge (one really ought to call it Whitcut because it has been masterfully updated by the lady of that name) reminds me of how slackly I have been writing. I immediately tighten up, stop confusing "presume" with "assume", "peruse" with "browse" and the like, and feel a lot better equipped to slay the dragons of shithouse writers and quarrelsome proofreaders.
Around the traps
The notion of Aussies' taking
revenge on stingrays is just too precious. I picture a pack of mulleted Rambo fans, grunting "you took one of ours, now we're striking back".
***
Having admitted that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11, Bush turned to another lie. This one is that leaving Iraq would be a
triumph for Al Qaida. The lie is somewhat disguised and most Americans probably won't grasp it. It's that the "insurgency" in Iraq is directed by Al Qaida. It isn't and never has been. At a stretch, one could claim that leaving Iraq would be a victory for the Sunni resistance but there would be many other ways to characterise it too.
***
I am not going to whine about Leeds' start to the season, because it's just too depressing. What I'm going to whine about is Soccernet's
presentation of league tables. I know that ESPN is American but what kind of fuckwit writes a football league table WLD? It's perverse. I keep thinking "lot of draws for Leeds", before I realise, with a sad, wry smile, that those are defeats. Against rubbish sides.
***
When I read Philip Pullman, an excruciatingly boring and pompous man, joining a crowd of doomsaying nannyists in telling us that
childhood is vanishing because of junk food, junk TV and junk computer games etc etc, I feel like buying the kids a packet of fish fingers and a Playstation.
It wasn't better in the good old days. Our parents were clueless and mostly damaged us. We were lucky to survive our childhoods. Yes, we had more fresh air and did more bicycling than the butterballs we're producing, but we were generally poorly educated and poorly equipped for a world that our parents understood no better than we understand ours.
All that this kind of outpouring does is make it harder for parents. Now on top of having to figure out how to feed, clothe and entertain our littlies, we're forced to feel guilty about not creating a perfect environment that probably no child has ever enjoyed.
***
When you live in a glass house, don't
throw cluster bombs. It's impossible to claim that you have the right to defend yourself against savage terrorists, if you are in fact the biggest, most savage terrorist on your block.
It's curious too how "operational reasons" prevent the IDF from admitting that it had used weapons that anyone civilised would abhor, yet they never prevent it from discussing in great detail what the "other side" does and what it uses.
And is wanting to avoid opprobrium actually an "operational reason"? What reason could there be? Are the IDF afraid that Lebanese civilians will wear chem suits to avoid a slow, agonising death next time Israel visits?
Bad
Do you ever have a creeping bad feeling that something is not going to work out well? I do. It isn't reasonable and can't be reasoned with.
I cannot look forward to going to China because I have a feeling. I am afraid of going. I don't know why. I have never had any problem with travelling before. I have cheerfully landed in foreign cities with no idea where I was going, where I would stay, what I would eat. But I feel I will have a bad time in China.
***
I am having a bad time altogether. I hate everything I do. I hate poker, because I cannot win, and I fear I am not improving. I know that I am suffering terrible beats and that this is most of it but reason does not help when you are
feeling bad. (Today, two hands apart, I had KK cracked in the worst way. In the first case, the other guy called my raise, called a bet on the flop, another on the turn and then showed TT when the river came T. In the second, a guy called my raise, bet and called my raise on the flop when it showed 953 or something similar, called a bet when I turned a K, and then we capped it with a river Q. I was sure I'd see QQ or KQ. No. This fucking idiot had JT. I had JJ in an NL tourney, pushed on a raggy flop, and saw the other guy call with AQ. Great, right? Miles ahead, easy money. No way. He rivers a Q. Some guy calls me all in with AA. He has T8. I am not making this up. Flop is AJ3. Turn K. If you don't know the river is a Q, you don't know poker. In limit, I have 66. The flop comes T96, two spades, so I have a set. Did some guy luck out with his flush draw? Yes, sir, he did. But not just that. Turn and river both came spades and one was a seven, so
all three of my opponents sucked out on me.)
I hate newsgroups. Everyone in them is so boring and stupid, I can't shine. It's important that the people you post with give something to you. Otherwise, you're just wasting the good stuff on plodding nonsense. Do I want to spend my days arguing with people who simply cannot accept they have it wrong about such tedious shit as whether the serial comma is good style in the US (which it clearly is) or whether America felt all gooey and charitable towards postwar Europe (it didn't; it basically raped it) or whether Raymond Haddad is a cunt (he is) or whether "hoi polloi" should have an article (it should) or whatever else. I don't mind butting heads over trivial shit. I like it. But I only like it when my fellow butter is giving it full value.
I hate my life. You'd hate it too if you had to live it. I do a boring job that I can't stand; I have a shitty marriage that I can't leave; I have a headache that never seems to go away and I have had diarrhoea for two years. The latter I consider to be of spiritual origin. Some of the small comforts that were making it bearable are diminished: S freaked out on me and is a footnote, my friend C scarpered to Melbourne with his horrible girlfriend, my iPod is damaged and I can't afford a new one or to fix this one, some other people in my life want more, ever more, when I have less, ever less, to give, I can't stand going to football on my own any more, it's just too depressing hearing people have friends to talk about it with, and being on the bus home on your own makes you feel as sad as you look (I realise this is why I haven't written, and won't write, a match review for the Glory game: I'll just be miserable that no one wants to read it, not even me). I am just scraping my living at the moment and I have to work extra hours to make enough to do the extra things.
Sometimes having a family is just a burden to carry, and there's no joy in it. I have times when I just don't want to see them, hear them, be with them. I'm sure it's mutual, and I'm sure it's something that happens to us all. I know others have much worse to deal with.
Sometimes you look in the mirror and think, how the fuck did I get here? I have stopped asking how I get out. I know I don't. I am not equipped, I have no liferaft and I am going to have to drown.
***
I know. Snap out of it. But you know what the problem is? I already know what you're thinking. I think it myself. So where are you left when you can't think about it?
Workshop: The proposal/Train of thought
Kim’s two efforts cover two different approaches to fiction. The first is a straightforward story, with twist; the second, a mood piece. Regular readers will know I don’t mind a mood piece myself but I think that for the reader’s sake, it must offer one of three things: insight, humour or music. Without one or other, all you have is writing, writing, writing. Does Kim show any insight in Train of thought? I dunno. It didn’t really grab me. I thought it was nicely imagined but I don’t know that it told me anything new. It wasn’t meant to be funny so the humour wasn’t there. So I’d have liked to feel more music. It’s not easy to make writing rhythmical – not so that it reads well at the same time – but it’s a goal well worth aiming at. Some techniques you can use are parallelism (structure sentences in the same way), assonance and interior rhyme, and, if you are careful, metre. I’m not a particularly good formal poet, but I have my own understanding of metre. If I can hum it, it’s metrical. So sometimes I’ll get the tune, and then strive to make the words fit. The correspondence does not have to be tight, because after all, we’re writing prose.
As for The proposal, I liked the twist. The payload was obvious, in my view, but the delivery was clever. I think the story was a bit too slight though. Kim could have taken it on and made something more out of it. How does Hicham take rejection, for instance?
I’m finding with more than one of these stories that the writer is setting up a decent story: creating characters or situations that can go places. But you have to deliver! Don’t be afraid to write the next thousand words. It’s hard work and you fear that you will trail off into useless, directionless blither, but it’s worth trying.
I know that Kim was concerned about her punctuation and detail, which are quite poor, so I’m going to mark them without too much comment.
The Proposal -
We sit, he and I, in the far back corner of the subway car.
“We are sitting…”
Why? Two main reasons. The first is that this is how you would *say* it if you were telling someone: “We were sitting in the train when…” In general, you won’t go far wrong in writing, unless you talk like an android, if you write it as you speak it. I don’t mean all full of hesitations and half-sentences; I mean use the natural fluency of your spoken language.
Writers should read their work out loud. If you do not do this, start doing it. If it doesn’t sound good, it’s not well written.
He led me here, through car after car until he found one that suited him, ushering me into the corner and sitting down catty-cornered from me so our knees are touching.
Let us imagine the touching of the knees. We can picture you from your description: “catty-cornered”.
It is late on a hot summer night on my fourth day in New York.
This is a nice touch and a nice clue.
I am visiting my cousin whom I have not seen since I was a child.
Award yourself a pedant point for “whom”.
My companion is a boy I met when I wandered into an Arabic grocery store. He waited on me, was impressed with my knowledge of Arabic and said I had
a
good accent. He offered to show me the city and we have spent every day together since.
I would rather have introduced him with less background, so we are not sure how well you know him. This gave away the twist.
I am sitting so I can look out the windows of the car
Comma.
Generally, you should use a comma before this “and” in American English. American readers are more concerned about the possible ambiguity than English ones.
and I.
A bare “am” looks a bit odd.
am letting my gaze wander around the car when he takes my hand. Our fingers intertwine.
Comma.
His thumb over mine, caressing gentling.
Gently.
Actually, I would leave out the adverb. You generally caress gently, and would only mention it were it rough.
“I love you”, he says except with his accent it comes out “I luff you”.
Just write “I luff you”. We know he’s Arab so we get it from that.
I smile, more so at the pronunciation then
than
at the statement
comma. The “and” goes after “smile”, and the stuff beginning “more so” is a parenthesis, which needs a closing comma.
and squeeze his hand.
He is beautiful to me.
This implies he’s not actually beautiful, but you think he is.
His dark curly hair is cropped short and has large, expressive brown eyes lined with delicate long lashes.
Kim, do me a favour. Promise that no character of yours will ever, ever have “expressive” eyes again.
Everyone who reads this: promise it. It doesn’t actually mean a thing. All eyes are equally “expressive” and it’s only a question whether you do or don’t express anything with them. Not that the phrase actually means that or anything else. It’s void of meaning. It’s the sort of thing you read in books, nod and move on. It’s just filler.
We all do it though. But you can excise filler from your writing by critically reading it when you have finished writing. Interrogate adjectives and adverbs. Ask them what they’re doing. What do they add for the reader? How do they help our understanding of the character or the story?
Okay. So what else is wrong with this description? As I noted in Don’s piece, you need to try to make your descriptions active rather than say what things “are” or people “have”.
“His large, brown eyes stare at me from behind long, delicate lashes.” Hmmm, it’s a bit soft but you get the idea.
“He wears his dark, curly hair short…”
“His dark, curly hair frames a baby face untouched by the harshness of city life.”
Well, you see where I’m coming from even if I’m not setting the page alight.
His face is soft, like he has not lost his baby fat yet, even though he is 21. His lips are full and are now stuck out in a slight pout and he repeats, “I love you, Kim”.
I wouldn’t belabour the description. You could just say “He pouts and repeats: “
I don’t really know what to say in return so I smile, squeeze his hand
Comma. Strunk and White would have a conniption at you guys’ unwillingness to use the serial comma.
and mumble “Thank you.”
He gives me
my
hand a tug to get my full attention
Just stop at “tug”. We can work out why he’s doing it. Don’t spoonfeed the reader. Tell us only what we can’t figure out for ourselves.
“I mean it, I love you, I want to move to Iowa with you. I don’t want to lose you in a few days.”
I am flattered and blush. “What would you do in Iowa,” I ask.
“Marry you…will you marry me?”
I laugh. “Do you need a green card?” It was
Is. It doesn’t make sense to switch tense here.
cruel thing to say, but it was
is
the only thing I could
can
think of and I regret it as soon as it is out of my mouth.
But it’s very nicely observed, because it’s what most of us would say. Don’t underestimate the value of ringing true.
His eyes darken, glisten. He has tears standing. He drops my hand and reaches around and gets his wallet out. He opens it and throws a card in my lap. It is a green card.
“My father sponsored me. I don’t need anything from you. I love you. I want to be with you. I have never met anyone like you. Don’t you love me?”
“Hicham…” I say gently. He will not look at me. I reach out and touch his face. “Hicham, I like you a lot, but love? You don’t really know me, we don’t know each other.”
He looks at me; his face takes on the guise of a defiant child.
Hmmmm. Does it? Do you know what that would look like? If you can say what that looks like, that’s what you should have written! It’s much better to say what things look like than what they are like.
At the very least, say that “he scrunched his face up, defiant as a child in the wrong” or something.
He moves from his seat and kneels in front of me, taking both my hands in his and says, “I know you. I am not a child. I am a man and I know I love you. Marry me?”
I look into his eyes and ask, “What is my last name?”
I liked that! It was way obvious what the denouement would be but that was cute.
His face falls;
Period. Don’t join sentences that are not particularly connected with semicolons.
he drops my hands and moves back to his seat. He looks down the car and does not speak for the next few stops. The only sounds are the squawk of the conductor coming over on the loud speakers calling out the next stations and the clatter of the train moving.
I wouldn’t bother saying what the sounds were: we know what subway trains are like.
His cheeks turn blotchy and he rubs at his eyes with the backs of his hands.
I get up, move to the seat next him, taking his hand and leaning my head on his shoulder. “I am sorry, I did not mean to hurt your feelings, Hicham. Marriage, love, it
is
a lot, it is a lot for just a few days, don’t you think?”
He shrugs and kisses the top of my head. We sit in silence until the Astoria Blvd stop where we will step back out into the humid night. The train’s movement rocks us back and forth gently, easing the tension between us.
Take it on, Kim. Do more with it. I like it as a start but I think there’s more that can be done with this. I would have been tempted to have another scene on another train: Kim and Hicham, married with child. How did that happen? Etc.
Still, I will note that you met the unities pretty well. Did I say maximum of three characters? Or three? Anyway, a good effort.
Just the briefest of comments on this next one.
Train of Thought
Red blinking lights, the clang-clang of the warning bell lets the drivers know the crossing arm is coming down, a train is coming. It is music to his ears. He eases his foot off the gas peddle
Pedal. Peddle means to sell.
, allowing him to slow but not use his brake so he is not alerting the car behind him that he has no intention of gunning his car over the tracks. He wants to be here, he
is
meant to be here. The arm comes down in front of his car
period
, in his rearview mirror he can see the driver behind him, annoyed, hands hitting the steering wheel. He smiles to himself….relax buddy, he thinks.
I do like the air of contented slowing down and you do nicely capture the idea that it’s good to be stuck at the lights.
This is his time, between his life at work and his life at home. The only time he has to let his mind drift, to think of nothing and everything. He loves trains, has always loved trains. He likes to let his imagination take over, likes to wonder about the cars – what is in them, where they have been? What does that piece of graffiti mean? Was it put there by someone who rode in that very car, did they mark it so someone, somewhere would know they existed?
He wonders about this a lot. Likes to think about what it would be like to ride in one of those cars, the door open, feeling the air rush past is
his
face as he looked
looks
out at the world he was
is
passing by for a change instead of vice versa.
I dunno. Isn't the world passing him by for a change? As he sits? Instead of his driving past it?
At the crossing
I like a comma here.
he does not have to think about whether or not
Just whether. If you think you could replace “whether” with “if”, you don’t need “or not”.
he is going to meet the ever looming dead line
one word. I'm not sure about "ever" because I don't think deadlines often loom and then not loom.
, he does not have to think about paying bills or picking up the milk as the sticky note reminds him he needs to do from his briefcase.
Woah. That’s a bit confused. Say “as the note stuck on his briefcase reminds him to do”.
He just gets to breathe.
“He can just breathe.”
Car after car goes by....maybe he will call in sick tomorrow, go see a ball game….He won’t…but at the crossing he can think about it…..maybe he will buy a motorcycle. He used to have one…he loved the feeling of freedom it gave him….maybe he will do that…when he can afford it…what price freedom, he thinks, smiling to himself.
I’m actually liking this more now I go through it slowly. What I do like in a story – I’ll doubtless say it a dozen times in this workshop – is true-to-life-ness. This sounds real to me. Yeah, I will; no, I won’t. We think like that. We feel like that. It really strikes a chord.
If a story reaches out and drags you in, that makes you feel good. And if the reader feels good, they’re going to love your work.
As the last car goes by, his mind comes back into focus, he remembers he needs fish food…milk and fish food…milk and fish food….the crossing arm goes up, his foot eases back on to the gas….milk…fish food….motorcycle….. smile
Do try this again, Kim. Get a tune, something slow, soft and soulful, going in your head, and then write to fit. Don’t slow down until you’re finished. You’ll be surprised how little editing you need to do.
I repost both stories below. The copyright remains with the author, whose moral right to be identified as the author I affirm by attaching her name.
The Proposal -
We sit, he and I, in the far back corner of the subway car. He led me here, through car after car until he found one that suited him, ushering me into the corner and sitting down catty-cornered from me so our knees are touching.
It is late on a hot summer night on my fourth day in New York. I am visiting my cousin whom I have not seen since I was a child. My companion is a boy I met when I wandered into an Arabic grocery store. He waited on me, was impressed with my knowledge of Arabic and said I had good accent. He offered to show me the city and we have spent every day together since.
I am sitting so I can look out the windows of the car and am letting my gaze wander around the car when he takes my hand. Our fingers intertwine. His thumb over mine, caressing gentling. “I love you”, he says except with his accent it comes out “I luff you”. I smile, more so at the pronunciation then at the statement and squeeze his hand.
He is beautiful to me. His dark curly hair is cropped short and has large, expressive brown eyes lined with delicate long lashes. His face is soft, like he has not lost his baby fat yet, even though he is 21. His lips are full and are now stuck out in a slight pout and he repeats, “I love you, Kim”.
I don’t really know what to say in return so I smile, squeeze his hand and mumble “Thank you.”
He gives me hand a tug to get my full attention, “I mean it, I love you, I want to move to Iowa with you. I don’t want to lose you in a few days.”
I am flattered and blush. “What would you do in Iowa,” I ask.
“Marry you…will you marry me?”
I laugh. “Do you need a green card?” It was cruel thing to say, but it was the only thing I could think of and I regret it as soon as it is out of my mouth. His eyes darken, glisten. He has tears standing. He drops my hand and reaches around and gets his wallet out. He opens it and throws a card in my lap. It is a green card.
“My father sponsored me. I don’t need anything from you. I love you. I want to be with you. I have never met anyone like you. Don’t you love me?”
“Hicham…” I say gently. He will not look at me. I reach out and touch his face. “Hicham, I like you a lot, but love? You don’t really know me, we don’t know each other.”
He looks at me; his face takes on the guise of a defiant child. He moves from his seat and kneels in front of me, taking both my hands in his and says, “I know you. I am not a child. I am a man and I know I love you. Marry me?”
I look into his eyes and ask, “What is my last name?”
His face falls; he drops my hands and moves back to his seat. He looks down the car and does not speak for the next few stops. The only sounds are the squawk of the conductor coming over on the loud speakers calling out the next stations and the clatter of the train moving. His cheeks turn blotchy and he rubs at his eyes with the backs of his hands.
I get up, move to the seat next him, taking his hand and leaning my head on his shoulder. “I am sorry, I did not mean to hurt your feelings, Hicham. Marriage, love, it a lot, it is a lot for just a few days, don’t you think?”
He shrugs and kisses the top of my head. We sit in silence until the Astoria Blvd stop where we will step back out into the humid night. The train’s movement rocks us back and forth gently, easing the tension between us.
Kimberly Burnett 2007Train of Thought
Red blinking lights, the clang-clang of the warning bell lets the drivers know the crossing arm is coming down, a train is coming. It is music to his ears. He eases his foot off the gas peddle, allowing him to slow but not use his brake so he is not alerting the car behind him that he has no intention of gunning his car over the tracks. He wants to be here, he meant to be here. The arm comes down in front of his car, in his rearview mirror he can see the driver behind him, annoyed, hands hitting the steering wheel. He smiles to himself….relax buddy, he thinks.
This is his time, between his life at work and his life at home. The only time he has to let his mind drift, to think of nothing and everything. He loves trains, has always loved trains. He likes to let his imagination take over, likes to wonder about the cars – what is in them, where they have been? What does that piece of graffiti mean? Was it put there by someone who rode in that very car, did they mark it so someone, somewhere would know they existed?
He wonders about this a lot. Likes to think about what it would be like to ride in one of those cars, the door open, feeling the air rush past is face as he looked out at the world he was passing by for a change instead of vice versa.
At the crossing he does not have to think about whether or not he is going to meet the ever looming dead line, he does not have to think about paying bills or picking up the milk as the sticky note reminds him he needs to do from his briefcase. He just gets to breathe.
Car after car goes by....maybe he will call in sick tomorrow, go see a ball game….He won’t…but at the crossing he can think about it…..maybe he will buy a motorcycle. He used to have one…he loved the feeling of freedom it gave him….maybe he will do that…when he can afford it…what price freedom, he thinks, smiling to himself.
As the last car goes by, his mind comes back into focus, he remembers he needs fish food…milk and fish food…milk and fish food….the crossing arm goes up, his foot eases back on to the gas….milk…fish food….motorcycle….. smile
Kimberly Burnett 2007
