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Don’t leave me this way
A man walked along a street in a city he did not know. He pulled his collar up high to cover his ears from the cold wind. His eyes darted from one alley to the next. He stopped scanning next to a dumpster behind a beauty salon. He walked up to a woman huddled against the wall.
The woman’s sweater had a tear across both shoulders. He shoulders, covered in mud, protruded from the sweater. Her hair, thin and pasted to the side of her head, showed signs of red dye but had been nearly overcome by gray and grime. The shadow of a man standing over her sparked movement. She shifted and raised her hand over her face. She rubbed her feet through the layers of socks on them.
“Please sir,” said the woman. Her voice cracked and she sniffled to stop crying. ”I need help.”
The man did not move. Instead he remembered.
”Mommy, I need help,” said the four year old boy.
“Shut up you ungrateful brat,” screamed the mother without turning away from the TV. ”Why can’t you be more like your sister and be quiet.”
The man shook his head. He would not dwell on the past.
“Please,” said the woman, “I have not eaten.”
The wind picked up and took a piece of paper out of the dumpster and threw it between them. The man’s eyes followed the paper as he remembered.
The boy had gotten home from school. He was so hungry. He couldn’t even ask friends for left overs anymore. Kids without lunch money were not allowed in the cafeteria during lunch.
He opened the refrigerator. It was empty. But there was an empty carton in the back. He lifted it up. He saw sliced cheese and some Cheez-its.
His stomach rumbled and hurt. He took two slices of cheese and a fist full of Cheez-its and shoved them in his mouth.
A hand hit him across the back. ”Those are mine you worthless thief!” His mother screamed and started hitting him again.
He ran. He slammed into the kitchen door and broke it.
”Now your father is going to beat you good,” yelled his mother from behind.
She was right. He would sleep in the woods by the high tension lines tonight and hope they drank too much again and forgot.
The man felt the welt on his back like it was fresh. He did not move, he had grown used to them decades past.
The woman stopped rubbing her feet and pulled them underneath herself. She sat up and tried to look at the man.
“Please sir. It’s not normal to be like this.”
The man felt his body shudder. Decades later that word still caused him to lose his composure.
“Why couldn’t I have normal kids?” The woman threw the empty bottle of Boones Farm at the boy.
The boy ducked easily. Years of practice had taught him how to avoid being hit.
He fingered the ones and quarters in his pocket. ”It is the money from my paper route. I need new sneakers for gym.”
“I’ll write you a stupid religious exemption you retard. If you weren’t so stupid you could figure that out.”
She put on her fake smile. ”Besides, do you want your sisters to be without water since you were so greedy?”
The boy walked to the water authority and paid the bill. He had to wait for the blisters on his heel to go down before walking back. There would be no beating that night for being late. She had passed out surrounded by four bottle of Boones Farm.
“My kids,” she said between sobs, “they all abandoned me. I did my best for them all those years.”
The man remembered bringing back her forged signature on the Navy recruitment papers.
“Son,” said the recruiter, “The nuclear power program is a good program. But hell son, you graduated early and have an ROTC college scholarship.”
“I think I need the maturity,” said the seventeen year old. He had long since gotten good at lying to adults. They all wanted to hear lies.
The recruiter signed the papers. ”Do you have anyone else to say goodbye to?”
He had said goodbye to his friends. His sisters had been sent to live with their father when they became too wild. He shook his head.
The recruiter gave him a five dollar bill. ”There is a Wendy’s over there. The car will pick you up at six to bring you to the airport.”
The recruiter shook the boy’s hand, “Good luck, Seaman Recruit.”
The man bent over. He put down a bottle of Boone’s Farm, a box of Cheez-its, and a pack of sliced cheese. He turned and walked away.
“Wait, who are you?” The woman tried to stand. ”Wait, are you…? Please come back.”
The man did not turn around he was lost in another memory, the one that brought tears to his eyes.
Book Review – 250 Things you should know about writing
So, @chuckwendig says that if you like an author, review his work. Ergo, I will. I will also review this book on B&N also. Here is a review of 250 Things every author should know. Since it’s not a novel, its a writing help book — I will do this differently.
I just used two hyphens as punctuation in a review for a book about writing. Yes I did.
Why yes, I do need an editor. Why do you ask?
A little about me. I’m a grown up – a real one. I hold a job in a fortune 1000 company which is under a fortune 100 umbrella and I am not allowed to use either company name. I have been certified as a PMP since 2003 and I have a degree in mathematics.
I tell you those things to let you know I am not going to review the parts of the book that to me sound like; ‘be a grown up.’ If you have not finished a book, if you ‘aspire’ to write, if you think you can write and have the world come to you, if you still live at home, or you’re immature. You need this book.
That being said, I found this book incredibly useful and I am going to share the most notable nuggets from it without plagiarizing. I did use two quotes and they’re the only items in double quotations. I took them from the book being reviewed.
Without further ado, the section is listed first followed by the number of the item I am discussing.
Storytelling #9
This is a great piece of advice I’m going to keep referring to when I write. Chuck, can I call him Chuck?
No answer. Well, I will call him Chuck until otherwise told differently.
He tells us how the audience is rooting for the characters to be happy. The problem with that is a story of happy characters is a story that sucks. Stories are “Born from conflict and struggle, not merely from resolution.” I tend to be too easy on my characters. I need reminders to be mean.
A side note, I cannot use the word ‘merely’ without thinking about Robot Visions by Isaac Asimov…
Storytelling #12
Ugh. I hate unspecific advice even then there is a reason for it. “Rhythm and pacing are meaningful.” So is sunshine. Thanks for nothing. Maybe this is a pet peeve of mine and should exclude this section. I guess we will see.
Storytelling #13
Wow. Clear and succinct advice that is valuable not only to writing but also in life. Have you ever gotten into a conversation with a person who uses a gazillion digressions, tangents, or deviations? Ever wanted to strangle that person? Then, why do I write like this?
Storytelling #14
This is awesome advice. I have been in writers critique groups when one of the writers asks us to review a fantasy story that has this awful prologue about gods that do lots of things. Its all narrative and its…(I will quit bitching now). Anyway, the aspiring author always defends the prologue by saying, ‘nothing makes sense without it.’ This chunk of advice is the ammo to tell him to leave that ‘Big idea’ crap for his D&D game.
Character #14
Maybe this one should have its own list of twenty five. This law of threes idea sounds good. Unfortunately, I’m still looking at you with the trout face. I want to understand this rule of threes, I just don’t get it.
Character #24
Hey this is a good idea. Make a flash fiction or a short involving a character (or a flat supporting character) in order to get to know him better… hmmm…
Plot #18
So, I’m cruising along reading through the plot section. I’m saying yeh, yeh, ooh, yeh and we get to a problem. Tracking every beat? Really? Every beat as defined as every action? I comprehend the need to track beats where a character is going through his transition. But, actions like ‘he swept the leaves,’ ‘scooped them into the bag,’ ‘placed his staff against the merlon,’ when the purpose of the scene is to show how this dude is taking punishment for someone else? Could I get an explanation — and no I’m sick of the cop-out ‘take what works for you.’ If I’m not published, it hasn’t worked for me sweet cheeks!
Dialogue #9
Love this. This is a great piece of succinct advice I have never heard before. It’s also S.M.A.R.T. (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely). Really only SMA matters here, but that makes a lousy acronym. I will now add a check to look for warts on the nose. By the way, warts on the nose is a character exposition-ing himself.
Description #5
Actionable. I get the idea that Zelazny’s rule of three can be abused. But when you are lost at putting in description, having a rule of three to fall back on to get you over the hump is a godsend. On another note, if I could write like Roget Zelazny, I would cry like a little girl each night in thanks.
Description #9
Yep. Fantasy authors especially have issues with putting weather in regardless if it matters. My first attempts at novels had pages tracking weather patterns over my world. It did make my D&D games better as a result. My novels, they were cluttered.
Description #13
OHMIGOD. YES! This is a reader’s dirty little secret. I am not going to read that ugly font poem, your song of pussiness, or a page that contains no quotation marks. Therefore, I shall not write those things!
Description #24
I made an Indie movie, Contemporary Stranger. Unless you like home made movies about existential angst over technology’s role in our culture you did not see it. Once I made (wrote, produced, directed, sound, lighting, key grip, and a gazillion other things) the movie, people started liking my writing more than they ever had before and that gave me confidence to start writing again. Great piece of advice to cross between screenwriting and novel writing.
Sentence
Seriously, read the whole section. I reference Strunk and White regularly and I still suck.
There were others items that stood out at me, but I think I have a good enough selection of items in here for you to see how many of the 250 (275) things helped me. I believe the book can help you to and I hope I have shown that.
Final review is Beta Omega on a scale of A – 8. Recommended.
