Improving our Anon-100 challenge entries. (Read first post)

[hopewrites]

Improving our anonymous 100's

To receive more in-depth feed back on what did and didn't work in one's writing, let's post them here.

• Wait til not only voting but guessing has ended. (Don't want to out yourself too early.) Stories from any closed anonymous 100 are eligible for posting here. Not just the ones from the most recent challenge.
• Feedback should be constructive. If something didn't work for you, try to explain why. Ditto if it did.
• Only stories seeking feedback need be posted here.

[Mods feel free to modify this post for any additional guidelines I may not have thought to include. And thank you for it! You're tireless efforts to keep us all happily in line are not unappreciated.]

 

[Cory Swanson]

I'm willing to put mine up for help. What did you all think about Tea? Inspired by Vonnegut here.

 

[hopewrites]

Tea
... It had been sixty years since that day. Stan was now thirty four.

I like that you don't tell us exactly which days he's been skipping. If it's been 4 years since the perfect day when se stopped drinking and began waiting. Who exactly it is he is waiting for.

One perfect day, he told himself, he would stop.

So he hasn't stopped yet. Tomorrow he may drink. Which makes today different from yesterday and tomorrow. Which means there have been 4 years worth of todays in the last 60 years.

He would drink the tea when she finally returned.

When I read it the first time I got the feeling 'she' was dead. Not returning. And his perpetuated youth was a penance for loosing her.
The second time I read it I thought she had just left, he doesn't know where she is, whether she has access to, or desire to drink the tea where she is. Hope keeps him drinking, dispare dumps it out.


Overall a great piece. I didn't think it captured youth, youthfulness, or a sense of being young. It's a beautiful nostalgia piece, enjoying all the wisdom and life experience of 90 years, 2/3 of which are spent in the relatively capable and fit body one has around 30.

Being 34 myself this year, I felt close to your MC. There are days when I love my young fit happy body. There are days when the bed torments my lower back and refuses to let go of my stiff slow moving hips, when the greys are just grey, not sparkles in my hair...

I never ask my body bow old I am. It's fickle. It doesn't know. It is how old I tell it to be- within limits of course. I empathize with Stan, I get up and look in the mirror, and see someone in their vibrant late-teens/early-twenties. But the eyes. My eyes know more than any twenty-something should. And there are days when I want to throw off my cloak of youth and see the aged crone for who she is.

1460 cups is not so many out of 21900. Not so many days to loose.

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I'm looking for grammar errors and places I could tighten up what I've got here. -Thanks in advance for replies and advice

Peter lay on his back ignoring the brilliant blue sky and its depressingly cheerful clouds.

He didn't know anymore how long he'd been 'always a boy,' never growing up. Disturbingly he'd lately begun to wonder if he was missing out on something. If there wasn't something in Tinkerbell's temper, or Tiger Lily's smile he should be understanding, and wasn't.

Cannon fire in the distance calls him back from the brink.

Fighting pirates must be better than being a grownup... right?

 

[mosaix]

I agree with Hope, Cory. For me the 'youth' element of the theme didn't come through as strongly as it should.

Hope, as you know I voted for your piece. I was surprised it didn't garner more votes. In the limited word challenges those stories that pack the punch in the final line are the ones that do it for me and this one did it perfectly. I never thought of Peter Pan as a story line when, in hindsight, it was obvious. I can't see there's anything that you could improve on.

 

[Wruter]

@Cory Swanson - I liked the quiet domesticity of the piece. Only the last line confused me, I wondered if it should have been 'stop drinking'.

@hopewrites - I agree with mosaix, it was definitely one of my favorites too. The only grammar thing I see is the abrupt change of tense with 'calls'.

 

[Cory Swanson]

I think that is a very flattering review. I guess I went after aging rather than youth. In my mind, two sides of the same coin.

I felt that the last line was trying to illustrate that in a world where one can pause aging, letting yourself age is a form of suicide.

 

[hopewrites]

Oh! I didn't pick up on that. I certainly picked up on the "bucking the trend" thing. Having worked in a nursing home, I've seen that there are people who weary of living. I just assumed that in a world with tea, people would ease into old age en they'd been and done and seen everything they wanted to.

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Wow guys! I don't know what to say. Thank you! Thank you so much!