Ivoryfishbone - in reply to your e-mail

NO WAY! feels John McEnroe tantrum coming on. Rushing into Mothing was far superior. what you have with Rushing is a) a more technically competent piece. crisp sentences, no wasted words, no over-writing, good pace. whereas, sensed a bit of flotsam in Mother. b) a more profound piece - you're right in the character's mind, all you have to do is let go a bit and you're her. thinning the gap between reader and narrator, now that's good writing. and look at the balance of it, the way the mind flicks from the kind of man she's got to the kind of man she wants to the kind of man she's going to see, and back again, a little more detail about each revealed each time. i mean, Jesus!! my main psychological criticism of both pieces is that Fish lets her female characters get a bit too comfortable. in Meeting Mother, the character accepts the Mother's claim. i would have preferred more tension, less acquiescence - the man is hers now, the mother will just have to live with her kitchen utensils and domesticity and @!#$. and no son. at the end of Rushing, the character smiles. but the character wasn't smiling in the rest of the piece. her thoughts are moving rapidly. here, there's complexity, a highly-strung woman, the kind who's always responsive, i see the type who's always hot and bothered and always listening. the type who can never quite find what she wants. i think she should have lit a cigarette at the end of the piece, or some such gesture to demonstrate a certain ambivalence - she's not in control, this may be the man she wants, but it may not be, and if it isn't, then that nagging need to find the right one remains. more ambivalent endings please, Fish! don't let your characters in prose be more at ease in their lives than you are in yours.

oh, for f's sake. the swear filter's killed my sentence. the word was sh.. now for f's sake someone get rid of that f'ing filter. language should never be censored. and this is a writers's site for f's sake. swear words are 'strong', important words. we need to be able to use them. and nobody give me some f'ing answer about children seeing them or sensitive people being offended. the children have got their own web site now and anyone who can't handle an expletive doesn't have the passion required to be any kind of writer, or an interesting kind of reader.

hi. i really liked the mother one. there was a sentence in it "There is no point asking one of these mothers if you might have coffee instead", which i thought was a rare occassion when a sentence captured everything you needed to know about the character. i also agree that no language should be censored, (except of cause for the ARS*NAL word)

interesting feedback ... thank you chant and all ... am considering the ambivalence point ...

Chant Well said mate. Ralph

Yes, Chant. Absolutely.

I have it on good authority that there exists a companion piece to Ivy's excellent "Rushing Into Nothing". The story in question is entitled "A:Love, Or Something Like That" by mark.k Both stories were the result of an online writing experiment.....

Is this the one Prof where you were both supposed to write about a meeting at the Angel of the North ? I told Ivory to put the poetrypoodle in the story.

To be honest I preferred Meeting Mother, I thought it raised deeper issues, and the power struggle between girlfriend and mother that comes to a head at the end hit home with me. Maybe that's why I prefer it I suppose. I thought Rushing into Nothing was well written and a good story, but Meeting Mother was better to me because there was more to it and behind it than Rushing into nothing, which, although leaving you wanting more at the end, didn't have as much substance ultimately. Not that you have to write about ground-breaking issues of course, and they're both great pieces, but since you offered up the one or the other option.......

I liked both, but I did prefer Meeting Mother (not least because in some small sense the Poetry Gauntlet played a part) but mainly for the reasons Julian outlines; there seemed to be so much going on. I prefer still "Cakes for Lita" , which I hope will come back at some stage.