Goggle by Drew

It was very easy to read and accomplished in its own right. I loved the ending, i'm sure it would fit snugly in a literary magazine.

Brilliant. Beautifully paced, witty, pellucid, odd: Magic Realism meets Pingu the Penguin. I could take more episodes about these characters. We have a genuinely gifted, professional writer in our midst here - growing before our eyes into something special: I also enjoyed his recent and impressively ambitious "A Post Hokkaido Blues": How many writers can write like this, let alone on ABC? d.beswetherick. [%sig%]

'Torn leads me outside and round the back of the house. The cold is like heat, the clarity like blindness.' Clarity.... that's what Drew excels at. I'd love to see this one expand into a much longer story. [%sig%]

I enjoyed reading this too, a nicely balanced piece with impact. Extreme landscapes and extraordinary people combine to convey powerful moments of self-awareness. My travel memoir is also about hot springs, but in a hot country and is also about an exraordinary person, but from a different perspective. I was interested in the difference between our two pieces and wonder if anyone might feel they could comment; I think I've learned something by comparing his piece with mine, and why his is more successful. Any offers...?

Thanks everyone. Emma, where is you piece?

Here Drew:

Strong and confident in it's simplicity, it's wonderful.

Hang on a minute folks, I was referring here to my travel memoir, not my unfinished short story. The memoir is the only thing I have posted at present that's finished, I've been working a lot on the story today and am planning to post some more up asap. I'll try this URL posting thing,...hang on, novice at work....

http://www.abctales.com/story/56516 wow, there you go folks - success, I'm giddy. This is my travel memoir with the hot springs in.

hold on though, it's not in red - any offers?

The only other thing I can say is that the memoir can be found in the second section of the 'last 100'. It's not under my profile - do I need to categorise it under a letter of the alphabet to get it there?

here goes again

I'm so giddy with success, I'll have to stop for a while. Sorry for taking up so much space on this thread folks.

First off, I would cut the long introduction. I would say, 'Elizabeth Bryant killed herself on October ?? 1994. This piece is dedicated to her memory.' I enjoyed reading the memoir. It was very nicely written - good descriptions, nice sense of place. Just a few comments. Don't use exclamation marks. For example - 'We were therefore in no doubt as to his abilities!' Also don't put things in inverted commas if it's not speech - 'having been bitten by the 'travel bug'.' Try and make your sentences sharper - what Chooselife said about clarity. "I couldn't say, therefore, what she had absorbed about my travelling experience there which made her resolve to go, but with only a suitcase-worth of comfort, she went; she was twenty-one years old, with an octogenarian father and an estranged brother by way of close family, but many apprehensive friends." The first half of the sentence has too many commas. Put a full stop after went. Cut 'by way of close family' the 'and' before estranged brother, the comma before 'but' and change the 'but' to an 'and'. Again here: "My parents, who had worked in Singapore for fifteen years, were regular visitors, and had a special relationship with a Mrs Oka who still runs an Ashram (following the teachings of Gandhi) on the south-eastern coast in a small village called Candi Dasa." Get rid of the brackets and change it to, "...Mrs Oka who still runs a Gandhi inspired Ashram on the..." These are really minor comments. In general I thought the descriptions well done: "The landscape which radiated out from the volcano was unlike any we had seen before. It was a moonscape created by ash and contrasted unexpectedly with the more famous lush rice terraces, fruit and palm trees of the majority of the island." Very nice. I can't do descriptions you know and so have therefore pared down my writing over the last few years to exclude them almost altogether.

The opening could be shorter but it's relevant to Elizabeth's story that her own mother committed suicide and we shouldn't lose that. I also feel the last para could be tighter; I don't fully see how alienated Elizabeth was. I like Emma's 'voice' which can be the hardest element to develop in a piece like this. There's great potential here, I feel (and not just 'cos she flagged one of my poems). [%sig%]

I am thrilled to receive your comments Drew and Chooslife, I take them very seriously and immediately see your points. I've been a much worse waffler in my time, and I still need to pare it down, and stop using so much punctuation. The discipline of academic writing has done me a lot of good recently. Thanks again. Elizabeth's story is very powerful, complicated and deeply moving and I need to tread carefully over it. Ten years since her death I'm only just able to dare to start something which has been in my heart to write for more like 20 years. It takes this long to work out what's important, what's respectful etc and there's some issues of privacy as some of her family are still alive. I don't know what the rules are on this sort of thing and was even slighlty concerned about posting it on ABCtales. Anyone got any advice?

Theres some top notch writing advice on this thread thanks for making it visible. In fact in the two year i have been going to writing groups in this city i have never heard anything as good as this.

Mildly amusing but not wonderful.

Sorry Flash, which piece do you refer to? This thread got a bit long.

The title piece.