Dear readers, I have not abandoned the blog. I have, however, been seriously under the weather since my return from this weekend's trip, so much so that I am ingesting cough medicine at an alarming rate and sleeping for hours on end in between that blessed event and the time when I must return to work. Thus, I have been left with no time at all to respond to comments or think up and write new posts.
Despite my illness, this has been a week of extreme good fortune. A hearing I was supposed to have tomorrow was canceled (I would have enjoyed it, but for my near-inability to make audible sound at this time) and I won dismissal of a case today, when I would otherwise have had a huge filing due by Friday. So clearly the Workload Gods are smiling upon me.
To tide you over until I am once again capable of rational (or at least irrational, but post-writing) thought, I will leave you with some reading and an assignment. As you may or may not know, I have ambitions of writing fiction and recently had the opportunity to work on a small short story piece. I would love it if you would provide some feedback on this, the first paragraph of a slightly longer piece I am writing:
I did not turn around to look at the weathered white truck as it pulled away from the curb. It never occurred to me to do so and even if I had, my tears would have prevented me from seeing it. It took only a few minutes for the relief to set in, relief that, among other things, there would be no more fights and no more subtly hurtful comments designed to make me doubt him, followed by efforts to make me doubt myself for ever wondering. I suppose I cried because it hurt to realize that someone who said he loved me would yell at me about something innocuous, then eject me unceremoniously from his truck on a bridge in a city in which I do not live. So, our once-promising romantic connection ended as abruptly as it began.
As a reward for your hard work, here is yet another photo from my Missouri weekend:
(The "spaceman effect" of the watertower was intentional, and produced quite a giggle from my subject.)
2 comments:
Lisa,
It is a promsing start to your story. I have two suggestions, although you are free to ignore them because you have the benefit of the entire piece, while we have only a paragraph.
1. A writing mentor of mine, who has published several short story collections, mentioned he could only recall one time when he used two adjectives in a row. He would have us circle every adjective and adverb in our stories so we could think long and hard about whether they were really necessary.
2. The second thing the mentor always asked was where is the salient detail to establish credibility, to set the scene. What are the smells, the sounds, the textures, etc. Hence, the challenge of writing, which I admit I am far from mastering, establishing the scene with credible detail while limiting adjectives and adverbs.
Hope you feel better and I look forward to reading the story when it is done.
JD, thanks for the tips! I have gone back to the drawing board on the whole piece and will post it here when I'm finished.
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