An ocean of jewels
Folks, next week – on 14 Feb – I want to take a look at some of YOUR work. I’ll pick out my tipple-top favourites for praise and commentary, but I’ll get to as much as I can in the comments as well.
To participate, please:
- FInd a chunk of work that especially pleases you
- Upload a maximum of 250 words via the comments below this post
- Give us a book title and a sentence or so to understand the characters / scene you’re writing about.
- And also, please, feel free to comment (truthfully but constructively) on any work uploaded by others.
You’ve got all week to do this.
On 14 Feb, I’ll fish through the work you’ve uploaded and pick out a few bits for my email that afternoon. I’ll also add comments, where I can, to the thread below.
That’s it from me. Any questions? No. So hop to it. Your finest work please. I look forward to seeing it.
Novel title: Sea Defences
Centres around the drowning of a little girl. The character in this scene is her mother.
She agreed, in the end, to a bath.
For three days, she lay in Hannah ‘ s bed, buried under the duvet, wanting not to be.
‘Try to eat something,’ Christopher said. ‘Or at least drink some water. Please. ‘
She drank a little. And perhaps there was toast. Or soup. Something. She was sick, then empty. She went to the loo a few times, clung to the walls, the doors, the side of the bath.
There were sounds. Voices, the phone ringing. Doors. Footsteps.
The smell of Hannah, warm, sweet, like the smell of the skin on the inside of your own elbow. The cotton sheet.
The bathwater was hot. There were bubbles. The scent made her think of purple.
‘Do you want me to stay? ‘
She shook her head, closed her eyes. Lowered herself, let her hands float, slid down until her head was underwater. She let the breath go out of her and waited. Slowly, she pushed herself back up. Water dripped from her face, her hair. Steam billowed round her and there were long gaps between her breaths.
She went downstairs. In the living room, cards crowded every surface – the mantelpiece, the windowsill, the side table. Doves and butterflies, angels and flowers, candles and rainbows and pastel-coloured hearts. Flowers stood in vases on the floor and the bookshelf and the coffee table – white, mostly, and the scent was heavy and thick and sweet.
It was a foreign land. She could not be here, with all this.
Hello Hilary, This is very well written and very convincing (especially, but not only, the 2nd sentence). You really put me in this mother’s skin. I just fell out of it a little in the next to last paragraph when she “went” downstairs with no particular effort after the struggles of the previous paragraphs. There seems to be a shift in her strength and her perception — she seems to see the cards and flowers without the blurred perceptions she had earlier, and I think maybe you need to signal that at the beginning of the para??? “Later, she went…” “Finally, she went…”
This sounds like a very interesting novel. Where are you with it, if that’s not indiscreet???
Best wishes,
Janet Savin
Thanks, Janet. Helpful comments. I see what you mean. I’ve written about a third of the first draft. This just happens to be a scene I wrote yesterday. It’s based on a short story i wrote a while back.
As Janet said, this is well-written. It is evocative.
I feel, personally, that it needs to be stretched out more. What i mean by that is add in more detail of the struggles to even decide to do the things that need doing. Who gave her the water? Who made the toast? When she went to the loo, there is pain and struggle in getting there, but the pain and struggle that she would ahve gone through to actually crawl her way out of bed to go would be even more intense.
Also, I felt that shaking her head to a question of “Do you want me to stay?” was wrong. She would have given no answer, no response. So the follow-up question of “Do you want me to go?” and the other person’s ensuing struggle – at a distance, beyond closed eyes – of whether to stay or go when faced with a lack of direction…
In reading an excerpt this short, it seems quite risky to say that a gesture or other kind of detail is “wrong” unless it is blatantly out of place or disturbs the coherence of the scene, the character, etc. This entire excerpt seems entirely coherent — the woman is too dazed to know who is giving toast, is a little more present with the lost physicality of her dead daughter (an admirable set of ironic twists) — until the mother goes downstairs, as I’ve already said. And at that point, there’s just a transition missing, not necessarily any lapse in coherence. One might say, “I would have done this differently”, but what is the basis for saying that it’s wrong?
I didn’t say it was wrong, only that – to me – it felt wrong. To my reading, it showed too much will, too great an ability to decide given her psychological state.
Henry Holloway
Dead man Risen
Katherine’s boyfriend Jack ran from the hay shed to avoid a confrontation with her father Wesley. Knowing Katherine had been with Jack the infuriated Wesley vented his anger on his beautiful daughter. Aware of her husband’s anger and violent and abusive nature his wife Maggie took matters into her own hands. The consequences of Maggie’s actions were far reaching and unpredictable.
Red welts appeared on Katherine’s buttocks, and then her mother Maggie appeared. She held a Hessian sack over her head to protect her from the rain. Maggie, was of medium height, and slim. Her auburn hair was held back with a red scarf, and her face was tanned, and weather-beaten, with high cheek bones. Her beauty was hidden by rough work, and a wearisome, lazy husband, who was frequently drunk, and violent, and twice her age. Maggie’s looks belied her age of thirty-two. Her husband Wesley contributed little to the marriage and expected everything.
“No”, Maggie screamed. “Stop it you rotten bastard,” and she threw the sack to the ground.
Wesley looked up, hesitated, and then saw Katherine’s discarded undergarments for the first time, and he swore and beat her again.
Maggie grasped a hay fork, and fearlessly pressed it into Wesley’s side. He raised his arm again, but she pressed on him even harder.
“So help me,” she screamed. “If you lay another blow on her I’ll run you through.”
Wesley released Katherine and stood back cursing, red-faced, and sweating, saliva drooling from the side of his mouth, and over the stubble on his chin. He pulled his braces back over his shoulders. Maggie withdrew the hay fork. Wesley held his belt in one hand and raised it as if to lash out again. Maggie stood her ground and dared him to touch Katherine, but instead he stumbled towards her and knocked her to one side scowling.
From a novel set in Havana. Anna makes an unannounced visit to her new Cuban friends’ house. Mr Starbucks is the nickname she gives to a zealously vigilant neighbour she has just passed outside:
I hurry inside. There’s that smell that reminds me why I don’t drink the water here. It’s as if the murky pipes got confused and dilute shit trickles out of the taps. Nice. The floor has fancy tiles, black and white with here and there one with a green or pink flower on it as if, long ago, someone thought very hard about where to place the pretty ones. Tucked in the corner is a huge Chinesey vase, purple, pink, green. Must be worth a bit, but it’s gone nowhere so I guess it’s safe. Ahead, through the rusty whirls and twirls of an iron grill, is the light of a garden, the smooth trunk of a palm rising tall and clean in the sunshine.
The Y’s live on the first floor. I pick my way round the rubble at the bottom of the stairs. No point grabbing the greasy-feeling marble handrail of the iron banisters coming away from the chipped marble steps. I’m not up for bungee jumping.
On the landing, I stop. I shouldn’t be here. To the left the door is ajar. I’ve not met Doña Clara but I know that, long ago, she owned the whole house. Is that her breathing I can hear, soft and rhythmic, as though, like Mr Starbucks, she is counting away the minutes and hours? Has it paused on hearing my footsteps? Far above, the deep blue eye of the sky is watching me through the hole in the roof.
Evocative.
And with a lot of little twists that made me smirk (e.g. “pipes got confused,” “bungee jumping”).
Mint, Treacle, Sugar, Rabbit & Chips.
This is the opening of a YA novel set in a hugely overpopulated world. The five main characters (names in the title) have to use all their ingenuity to survive not only shortages, but some scary rivalry from an unexpected source.
We picked food names, ‘cos we were always hungry. Mine’s Mint. That’s the joke, see? Double meaning. Don’t you get it? Mint – that’s what they call places where they print money. There we were, forging En-Toks, and I pick a name like Mint. ‘Course, these days, no amount of money is worth anything unless you’ve got the En-Toks to go with it. Something to do with your energy allowance. That’s what it stands for, see – Energy Token. Well, with twenty billion people on the planet, they had to do something.
The names are aliases. You know – in case we got caught. An’ we nearly were, too – the first En-Toks we made, they were rubbish – wrong colour, wrong texture, you name it. But then we got really good.
And that was when the trouble started…
‘It’s called being a victim of your own success,’ said Spanner, the first time he invited himself into our basement. ‘You should be flattered, y’know? If you were no good, I wouldn’t be interested.’
If only Spanner and his lovely mates had been our kind of age, we could’ve sorted them, one way or another. But they were grown-ups, and mean with it. They weren’t doing any threatening or posturing – they just looked like they’d rip your arm off if you got in their way. I wouldn’t let it show, but they made me feel scared, right deep in my gut, and I didn’t like that one little bit.
I really like the character-narator voice here. Very fitting.
My only concern is the currency, in two parts. Firstly, why have both money and En-toks? En-toks are your currency. Secondly (and thirdly), as a legal tender, they would be both physically far harder to forge (just look at modern money), and probably entirely digital.
Hi Alice,
I really appreciated your comments, thank you. I agree that love means letting go; in fact, I hope this story will fit into a collection about that very theme. I do think it’s important to explore the emotions of both parties in a situation like this. Right now, there’s a lot of focus on how much difficulty men give women, and that very much needs to be treated. But there are thoughtful men who try to do their best by women, even if they don’t always succeed (women aren’t perfect either), and I feel that that should be acknowledged. What are you working on?
The Interview– The short story of Renzo, a life-term prisoner who creates a kitchen garden that is capable of supplying forty per cent of Galleyburg’s fruit and vegetable needs. He writes a book: ‘Tales from a Blue Ridge Prison Garden’. However, a subsequent interview about the book leads to an altogether shocking revelation from beyond the perimeter fence. Initial extracts: –
I’m an inmate of Galleyburg State Penitentiary. We sweat in 100 degree heat mid-summer – we freeze in winter. This place has been my home for the last twenty-seven years and my only move has been from one side of the hill to the other – from USP to FCI Low Security. I’m a lifer – they wanted worse. As for Ethan, well, he got the death sentence.
… I served my first nineteen years in High Security. Now, if ever there was a case under the Eighth Amendment, it was that place – in that time: a complete assault on all aspects of your being, wrapped up in a stench that permeated every cubic inch of your space. Constant bang ups left only the roaches and rats free to pace those balconies at will.
… I headed for the chapel. No, I didn’t do the God thing but I’d go down there most days to breathe in the still clear air and sniff the morning sunshine that broke in through those two small barred windows on the east side. I ended up cleaning the place – those wooden pews never ever looked as shiny as they did after I’d worked my polish rag into the grain; even the preacher said so – ‘that patina on those benches Renzo – why, it’s as dazzling as any shining light emanating from His soul.’ That’s what he’d always say to me following prayers, contemplation, reflection, quiet engagement, whatever the order of that day; he was a high priest of contemporary multifaith – a great guy; now, I showed him respect.
Hi,
This is an extract from my romantic comedy, Love Regained. My central character, Beth, has been living abroad, but decides to return home when a relationship ends badly. Her friend Sammie has been house sitting for her; she returns to find he has set up a new business enterprise and has been running it from her house…
‘Beth!’ The colour drained from Sammie’s face. ‘I wasn’t expecting you yet.’
‘Evidently,’ I replied as I scanned the room. Half a dozen men, all in various states of undress, sprawled on the floor like a herd of degenerate hippos. Some were wearing what appeared to be straps of leather, odd looking concoctions across the torso, over the legs and – oh God, they went higher …
They were sitting around an array of objects in the centre of the room; more leather strap outfits, pots of some kind of gel, hunks of rubber ….
On the far sofa, Sooty and Sweep curled around each, watching the men below with disapproving expressions. At least they’re okay, I thought – but what had they been exposed to?
My eyes snapped back to Sammie, on his feet now and coming towards me. At first I was relieved to see that he at least was dressed normally, then I noticed the long, black stick of rubber he was waving in my direction.
‘Sammie, what’s that?’
He seemed to realise what he was holding and whipped it behind his back with a guilty expression, like he’d just been caught smoking behind the bike sheds. ‘Nothing.’
‘Well clearly it’s something.’
‘They call it the intruder,’ he replied with an embarrassed titter.
‘The intruder,’ I disbelievingly repeated. ‘And what is the intruder – not to mention this lot,’ I gestured at the men on floor, ‘doing in my house?’
An intersting premise.
It feels to me it’s screaming out to be in first-present rather than first-past; it wants to be more visceral and intimate.
Aside from that, the only things that jar for me are the lack of reaction from all those sprawling bodies (they’re just lying there, doing nothing), and the “Oh God, they went higher” which came after a mention of concoctions across the torso.
Thank you for taking the time to feedback Rick! You’re comments are really useful, and will definitely help me to tighten this up! 🙂
Thanks for reading and the tips Alan. Definitely useful. I had no idea about rafting… I love that there is a proper word for just about everything. My favourite is a dazzle of zebras.
sorry double post was here
Again, thank you, Trudy. And no, i don’t mind at all. I’m working hard on it! I might be able to sum up the courage to post some more but i seem to spend an age editing every chapter.
Good luck with yours too. I want to see how that one turns out
This is from my novel Tales from the Beehive.