Wavedancer commentary, part seven
May. 9th, 2009 10:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
valis2Intro/Index of all parts | Read without the commentary
Still in Mike's POV.
I was still amused by Lucinda's newest tactic, but it would be a cold day in hell before I'd have anything to do with that busybody. Much less live with her; even thinking of it made my skin crawl. She was a public nuisance, and I was still amazed that anyone spoke to her, considering the grief she'd caused over the years. Lucy had one son--Davy, once a friend of mine--and when he'd married, she went into gossip overdrive. The nice, amiable girl he'd chosen was simply "not good enough" for her Davy, and she went around and told everyone as much until Davy and his wife simply moved away and stopped speaking to her. She finally apologized but they never returned. I hated to see him go.
Okay, this whole section is pretty much one giant expositional block. Just one huge chunk of He Did This and She Did That (When She Wasn't On A Vodka Bender, That Is).
And wow, how awful do you have to be to chase your own son out of town?
There was only one person I held in lower regard than Lucinda Jensen, and that had to be Corny. I had never met his equal. I never wanted to. We went to college together, did the whole drinking-buddy thing, and I watched him borrow himself through all the money I had. He even ended up with most of my girlfriends as well. And when he finally learned that he'd landed the big Wall Street job he'd so desperately wanted I never saw him again. Unless you count the hired hand he sent to pick up the remainder of his possessions from our dorm room. I wrote off the money I lent him as a "learning experience"--one of my father's expressions for an unrecoverable loss--and went to work for Ferris Marketing. I didn't even consider coming home; Moray was a distant memory to me by then. Four years of Corny's insistence upon staying at college through summers and vacations put all thoughts of returning out of my head. I called Dad occasionally to touch bases and ask for money while I was still in college, but most of my time was spent partying or hanging out with friends. My senior year I met a girl named Kathy and we were inseparable the rest of the semester. When it came time to graduate and I knew I'd landed the job at Ferris I proposed to her. It was almost impossible to deal with her refusal, but I did, and went on to work for two years at the marketing company. Then I got the call from Dad that changed it all.
I love a couple things in this paragraph; that Mike is so laidback that he lets Corny basically go through his money and his girlfriends, and the "learning experience" bit. Both of those things are interesting and I think that they work well.
I have no idea why the "inseparable" Kathy decided not to get with him, but I think it was because she was having a good time with Corny or he stole her away or something. Despite being inseparable. I think Kathy comes back later in the story.
He finally admitted he had cancer. I came back to Moray alone, uncertain of what I'd find. I realized later that Corny had been completely serious about never setting foot in Moray again.
Why is this line about Corny attached here? Seems very out of place.
As soon as I drove into town again everything flooded back. Everything was so familiar--the streets seemed to remember my name. I drove to the house I had grown up in, and it was just as I had left it, the lilacs blooming around the front porch. I had cried to see my father then; the six years I'd been gone had been heavy for him, and he had aged more than I'd expected. Those years he'd been alone--my mother had died when I was thirteen, and I had no living siblings--they had weighed him down and bent him. Every sentence was punctuated by a chronic cough. While we were on the porch still talking I'd heard children yelling next door. It was then that it dawned on me that she would be an adult now, that she might have gotten married while I was away and I never would have known. But the woman who walked out the front door was not her, and Dad explained that her father had passed away two years previous. It must have been difficult for him; he and Neil had been childhood friends, together for most of their lives. Hell, they'd been next door neighbors for their entire lives.
I do like this, too. You know how sometimes you have friends and then you see them again and they've aged and it's kind of like, wow, my brain can't keep up with that?
I took over almost all of his charters and started repairs on the boats and the house, but a lot wasn't worth saving anymore. Katy, the secondary boat, had developed a horrible leak and had to be stripped to be of any use. I used anything salvageable to keep Sarah in working order, but it was obvious that my father hadn't had the strength to keep up with the maintenance required for either of them. The sailboat had completely rotted away.
Oh, damn. I guess the heroine's name wasn't Sarah; that was Mike's mom's name. Oh well, I'm not going back and changing it in these commentaries. See, another peril of not naming your heroine. You forget what the not-name was.
I eventually found out that she'd moved to the Island, and I went to pay a visit. I found her on the dock staring out into the Bay, and before I could speak she'd turned around and looked at me, smiling a slow beautiful smile. I walked down the dock to her and the wind whipped around us, smelling of spring and lilacs. She didn't say a word; she just stood and smiled. I expressed my regret at her father's death and asked if there was anything I could do, and her smile slowly faded and was replaced with a look of steel. I told her I was helping out my father's business, and she only nodded. There was a long uncomfortable silence until she turned back around, and that's how I left her, staring out into the Bay. Within reach of fall my father's chronic cough developed into terminal lung cancer. He had refused treatment for it, even knowing full well he had been diagnosed with it, and died instead stubbornly.
Okay. Here's another example of my inscrutable writing.
Personally, I like reading stuff that challenges me a little. Writing that has subplots and meanings that aren't immediately obvious, but with a little work become clear. (Just a little, though. I'm not tackling Finnegan's Wake, by any means.) So even though I do often spell things out, I sometimes make things a little more cryptic.
This is a great example of that. Do you, as a reader, understand what is going on with Sarah? Why she suddenly turns cold?
See, she's still pining over Mike...albeit just a little. And when she sees him, she remembers just how lovely he is (both inside and out) and is thinking, well, maybe he's come back because he wants to take a chance at us. She did advise Mike's father to call him and tell him that he had cancer, but in her mind, Mike has absolutely no reason to come and talk to her, so when he does, she's really happy about that and thinks that maybe he's interested. And then he just talks about her dad's death (and I'm sure you've noticed that she isn't really enamored of her dad), and about how he's helping his own dad, and she realizes that she was a fool to even consider that he might be into her at all, and so she cuts herself off emotionally.
She does have that black and white attitude, you see. Now that she thinks she knows that there's no chance for them, she drops it like a lead weight down into her well, and that's it.
And asking her if she needs help with anything after her father's died two years ago might be two years too late. Just my opinion, though I guess it can't hurt.
She helped with all the funeral arrangements and the little details I couldn't seem to concentrate on, and after it was all over she mentioned she could use some help with the snow removal service. It just progressed naturally into my decision to dismantle the charter business and sell the house to someone who could take the time to renovate it. Besides, being in it was just too damned painful. I moved into the apartment complex with her. I guess it had originally been a temporary move but now it was pretty much second nature to me. I had always liked the island anyways.
For being all expositional and everything, this is a pretty small paragraph for such a big move. I find myself wanting to read more about the apartment building and just how she was able to convince him to give up his father's business and get into hers. Was vodka involved?
I missed my father. He'd been a real good man. He'd always had time to talk to me. It was real rough losing my little sister Katy when she was five, and then losing my mom four years later. But we made a good go of it. He must have been pretty lonely in the old house, especially after Neil died. They'd done everything together.
This is worse than a Disney movie. No parents or siblings in sight. Except forScar Corny, the wicked betrayer.
He told me that she'd come over sometimes to help out around the house, and that it was she who insisted he call me and tell me about his condition. Apparently she'd even been the one to track down my phone number at Ferris. I still hadn't thanked her for her kindness, a thought that occurred to me every so often. I just never seemed to have the time to properly express my gratitude. Maybe this winter I would. Even though we'd gotten rid of the snow removal business last year it had still been a crazy winter; we'd done twice as many shows and cleaned everything from top to bottom. We also took the time to sort our tackle and sell off a lot of it at a swap meet. This winter we'd be able to relax and take it easier.
Not as much commentary, but still, this section is way too much tl;dr, you know? I think even my own eyes glazed over here.
On to part eight
Read this section without the commentary
Still in Mike's POV.
I was still amused by Lucinda's newest tactic, but it would be a cold day in hell before I'd have anything to do with that busybody. Much less live with her; even thinking of it made my skin crawl. She was a public nuisance, and I was still amazed that anyone spoke to her, considering the grief she'd caused over the years. Lucy had one son--Davy, once a friend of mine--and when he'd married, she went into gossip overdrive. The nice, amiable girl he'd chosen was simply "not good enough" for her Davy, and she went around and told everyone as much until Davy and his wife simply moved away and stopped speaking to her. She finally apologized but they never returned. I hated to see him go.
Okay, this whole section is pretty much one giant expositional block. Just one huge chunk of He Did This and She Did That (When She Wasn't On A Vodka Bender, That Is).
And wow, how awful do you have to be to chase your own son out of town?
There was only one person I held in lower regard than Lucinda Jensen, and that had to be Corny. I had never met his equal. I never wanted to. We went to college together, did the whole drinking-buddy thing, and I watched him borrow himself through all the money I had. He even ended up with most of my girlfriends as well. And when he finally learned that he'd landed the big Wall Street job he'd so desperately wanted I never saw him again. Unless you count the hired hand he sent to pick up the remainder of his possessions from our dorm room. I wrote off the money I lent him as a "learning experience"--one of my father's expressions for an unrecoverable loss--and went to work for Ferris Marketing. I didn't even consider coming home; Moray was a distant memory to me by then. Four years of Corny's insistence upon staying at college through summers and vacations put all thoughts of returning out of my head. I called Dad occasionally to touch bases and ask for money while I was still in college, but most of my time was spent partying or hanging out with friends. My senior year I met a girl named Kathy and we were inseparable the rest of the semester. When it came time to graduate and I knew I'd landed the job at Ferris I proposed to her. It was almost impossible to deal with her refusal, but I did, and went on to work for two years at the marketing company. Then I got the call from Dad that changed it all.
I love a couple things in this paragraph; that Mike is so laidback that he lets Corny basically go through his money and his girlfriends, and the "learning experience" bit. Both of those things are interesting and I think that they work well.
I have no idea why the "inseparable" Kathy decided not to get with him, but I think it was because she was having a good time with Corny or he stole her away or something. Despite being inseparable. I think Kathy comes back later in the story.
He finally admitted he had cancer. I came back to Moray alone, uncertain of what I'd find. I realized later that Corny had been completely serious about never setting foot in Moray again.
Why is this line about Corny attached here? Seems very out of place.
As soon as I drove into town again everything flooded back. Everything was so familiar--the streets seemed to remember my name. I drove to the house I had grown up in, and it was just as I had left it, the lilacs blooming around the front porch. I had cried to see my father then; the six years I'd been gone had been heavy for him, and he had aged more than I'd expected. Those years he'd been alone--my mother had died when I was thirteen, and I had no living siblings--they had weighed him down and bent him. Every sentence was punctuated by a chronic cough. While we were on the porch still talking I'd heard children yelling next door. It was then that it dawned on me that she would be an adult now, that she might have gotten married while I was away and I never would have known. But the woman who walked out the front door was not her, and Dad explained that her father had passed away two years previous. It must have been difficult for him; he and Neil had been childhood friends, together for most of their lives. Hell, they'd been next door neighbors for their entire lives.
I do like this, too. You know how sometimes you have friends and then you see them again and they've aged and it's kind of like, wow, my brain can't keep up with that?
I took over almost all of his charters and started repairs on the boats and the house, but a lot wasn't worth saving anymore. Katy, the secondary boat, had developed a horrible leak and had to be stripped to be of any use. I used anything salvageable to keep Sarah in working order, but it was obvious that my father hadn't had the strength to keep up with the maintenance required for either of them. The sailboat had completely rotted away.
Oh, damn. I guess the heroine's name wasn't Sarah; that was Mike's mom's name. Oh well, I'm not going back and changing it in these commentaries. See, another peril of not naming your heroine. You forget what the not-name was.
I eventually found out that she'd moved to the Island, and I went to pay a visit. I found her on the dock staring out into the Bay, and before I could speak she'd turned around and looked at me, smiling a slow beautiful smile. I walked down the dock to her and the wind whipped around us, smelling of spring and lilacs. She didn't say a word; she just stood and smiled. I expressed my regret at her father's death and asked if there was anything I could do, and her smile slowly faded and was replaced with a look of steel. I told her I was helping out my father's business, and she only nodded. There was a long uncomfortable silence until she turned back around, and that's how I left her, staring out into the Bay. Within reach of fall my father's chronic cough developed into terminal lung cancer. He had refused treatment for it, even knowing full well he had been diagnosed with it, and died instead stubbornly.
Okay. Here's another example of my inscrutable writing.
Personally, I like reading stuff that challenges me a little. Writing that has subplots and meanings that aren't immediately obvious, but with a little work become clear. (Just a little, though. I'm not tackling Finnegan's Wake, by any means.) So even though I do often spell things out, I sometimes make things a little more cryptic.
This is a great example of that. Do you, as a reader, understand what is going on with Sarah? Why she suddenly turns cold?
See, she's still pining over Mike...albeit just a little. And when she sees him, she remembers just how lovely he is (both inside and out) and is thinking, well, maybe he's come back because he wants to take a chance at us. She did advise Mike's father to call him and tell him that he had cancer, but in her mind, Mike has absolutely no reason to come and talk to her, so when he does, she's really happy about that and thinks that maybe he's interested. And then he just talks about her dad's death (and I'm sure you've noticed that she isn't really enamored of her dad), and about how he's helping his own dad, and she realizes that she was a fool to even consider that he might be into her at all, and so she cuts herself off emotionally.
She does have that black and white attitude, you see. Now that she thinks she knows that there's no chance for them, she drops it like a lead weight down into her well, and that's it.
And asking her if she needs help with anything after her father's died two years ago might be two years too late. Just my opinion, though I guess it can't hurt.
She helped with all the funeral arrangements and the little details I couldn't seem to concentrate on, and after it was all over she mentioned she could use some help with the snow removal service. It just progressed naturally into my decision to dismantle the charter business and sell the house to someone who could take the time to renovate it. Besides, being in it was just too damned painful. I moved into the apartment complex with her. I guess it had originally been a temporary move but now it was pretty much second nature to me. I had always liked the island anyways.
For being all expositional and everything, this is a pretty small paragraph for such a big move. I find myself wanting to read more about the apartment building and just how she was able to convince him to give up his father's business and get into hers. Was vodka involved?
I missed my father. He'd been a real good man. He'd always had time to talk to me. It was real rough losing my little sister Katy when she was five, and then losing my mom four years later. But we made a good go of it. He must have been pretty lonely in the old house, especially after Neil died. They'd done everything together.
This is worse than a Disney movie. No parents or siblings in sight. Except for
He told me that she'd come over sometimes to help out around the house, and that it was she who insisted he call me and tell me about his condition. Apparently she'd even been the one to track down my phone number at Ferris. I still hadn't thanked her for her kindness, a thought that occurred to me every so often. I just never seemed to have the time to properly express my gratitude. Maybe this winter I would. Even though we'd gotten rid of the snow removal business last year it had still been a crazy winter; we'd done twice as many shows and cleaned everything from top to bottom. We also took the time to sort our tackle and sell off a lot of it at a swap meet. This winter we'd be able to relax and take it easier.
Not as much commentary, but still, this section is way too much tl;dr, you know? I think even my own eyes glazed over here.
On to part eight
Read this section without the commentary
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-09 08:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-10 02:47 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-17 04:31 am (UTC)hehe - I felt so bad that for my last 2 comments I couldn't remember "Sarah's" name and it turns out there isn't one ^_^
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-13 05:27 pm (UTC)Y'know, it's so hard to do the exposition right. I look at this and think the same thing, honestly. Too little at the start, and too much now. It's kind of a mess. But you're right, Mike is my fave of the two, especially now that I'm rereading it all years later.
hehe - I felt so bad that for my last 2 comments I couldn't remember "Sarah's" name and it turns out there isn't one ^_^
Even funnier, that isn't even her real name. I can't remember what it is. No, seriously. *laughs and laughs*