Part One

Losing someone you love is hard, this story talks about how to honor them by living.

He woke up from dreaming and put on his shoes. He knew what the day held and he wanted nothing to do with it. The sky was dark and rain drops pounded at the glass of his windows. “How appropriate” he thought to himself. She would have laughed at the irony of the weather if she was here. But she wasn’t here and the rain was just another reminder of that. She loved the rain, when the sky turned grey with anger that was her favorite. She’d curl up on one of the chairs near the window and watch as the rain hit the glass. “It’s like music” she would say.

 Eventually convincing him to join her at the windows, sometimes they would sit there in silence wasting hours just watching the rain. He wished he could waste the day with her like they had done so many times before. All he wanted was to crawl under the covers and feel the warmth of her beside him. His hand wanders to her spot of the bed only to be met by cold sheets and the reality of the day sinks back in. His tie is in the same spot it has been for the last two years.

He hates ties; he only wears them when it’s completely necessary only making an exception when it came to bow ties. She loved him in a bow tie. He finds his suit jacket in the living room where he dropped it the night before. It lies on the arm of the couch beside the end table where her face beams up at him from the frames. It’s the picture of their first anniversary that catches his eye. She smiles brightly as they sit at the table of their favorite restaurant. Her smile could brighten a room. She could make any dark spot lighter. He didn’t want to face this dark spot without her. A knock on the door reminds him that he doesn’t have a choice. He glances at his watch and knows exactly who’s at the door, they are right on time.

Her best friend Abby stands in the door way, hair perfect and not a wrinkle in her dress, a bright pink dress to be exact. She would have loved it. She never thought black was the appropriate color choice for these things.

“We should celebrate the person; wear something they would love to see us in.” That’s what she would say. Yet here he was in all black, including the tie that he still held in his hand.

“Are you ready for this?” Abby asked. She knew he wasn’t and he could see it in her eyes that she wasn’t either.

“Give me a second.” He said leaving Abby in the doorway. He made his way to his room finding the bow tie she gave him for his last birthday. “It’s bright yellow, like the sun. I’ll always be able to find you wearing this.” She was right you couldn’t miss him when he was wearing it. He moved to the mirror making sure he didn’t put it on crooked. As he glanced at his reflection he knew this was right; this was what she would want.

Author's Note

May need help with editing.

Reviews

[JayG]

It needs more than editing, I’m afraid. This may sting, but I have two reasons for my comments. First is that if you do love writing, it’s something you need to know. The second is that as a teacher you can help prevent the huge misunderstanding we all leave our school years with: we think we learned to write.

In one sense, you did. And as you work, your students will, like you, learn to communicate via the printed word—a vital skill. But is that skill-set what’s needed for fiction?

Think of the reason public education was instituted: At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution many people could read and write…after a fashion. It was the mother’s duty, and a point of pride, to teach her kids to read and write with skill. But without standardization and training in how and what to teach, the result was iffy, spelling was creative, and math skills were limited. What that meant was that employers, who needed workers with the ability to read notices, write notes and reports, and do simple calculations, had to teach new writers those skills, and, pay for the classes.

The solution to that, and the mother being able to work, too, was to establish a public education system to train in the traditional Three R’s. And though a lot has been added, the core objective—to provide employers with a pool of prospective workers who have a useful and predictable skill set—hasn’t changed.

But what kind of writing do employers need? Its goal is to inform the reader clearly and concisely. To do that it’s fact-based and author-centric. Emotional content is minimized, and the outside-in approach, where the narrator explains, is inherently dispassionate if for not other reason than that the reader cannot know how to inflect a line with emotion if they don’t know what it will say in advance.

Forgive me for this, but let’s look at the opening of the story as a reader, who lacks context, and has only what the words suggest, based on their personal background, must:

• He woke up from dreaming and put on his shoes.

This is a report given in overview, stating that someone unknown, in an unknown location, woke for unknown reasons and is now wearing shoes of an unknown kind. I’m certain you visualize this person and how they’re dressed when you read this. But you cheat. You know where he is, what’s going on, and everything about him, his history, and the situation. To the reader, as the words are read, there’s no context. For all we know he’s weating only shoes. So your visualization of the setting and the reader’s diverges dramatically, in line one. It’s one of the pitfalls of that outside-in approach. Because you know the story, and things seem obvious, you leave necessary detail out. And because you know them you fill them in as you read, so there are no problems…for you.

But think about it. Does a reader care that someone they knothing about, not even his name, put on shoes? Would it matter if he’d slept with them on? My point is: isn’t it more important to make the reader know who he is, where he is, and what’s going on than details of low importance?

• He knew what the day held and he wanted nothing to do with it.

Why do I care? I just arrived, and have no clue of what you mean. He could be unhappy that they’re going to crown him king, or are going to remove his sex organ with a rusty knife. Either condition fits these first two lines, but the difference between them makes a huge difference so far as knowing his mood and expectations. So on line two the reader and the author are miles apart.

My point is that you know. The unnamed “he” knows. The others in the story know. But who did you write this for? Shouldn’t they know too, so they can feel as if they’re living the adventure instead of studying it like a history assignment?

Think back to your years of schooling. Did even one teacher explain the difference between a scene on the page and one on stage and screen? It’s huge. But if you don’t know that, or what the elements of a scene on the page are, how can you write one? How about such elements as the short-term scene-goal, the inciting incident, and why scenes almost always end in disaster for the protagonist?

It’s possible that if you took an undergrad creative writing course you may have heard the terms, but if yours was like most, you had two weeks in which you read a chapter ont fiction writing, in general, then wrote a short story that was critiqued by the class, who knew no more about fiction than did you. In other words, the blind leading the blind.

The thing we all misse is that professions are learned IN ADDITION to the set of general skills we’re given in our primary education years. And Fiction-Writing is a profession—and not an easy one to master. They offer four-year majors in commercial fiction writing in the universities, and surely some of that must be necessary, right?

As Mark Twain put it: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” And the thing none of us realize is that we leave our schooldays exactly as qualified to write fiction as to remove an appendix. So because we’re unaware there IS another approach to writing, we assume that since the skill is called writing, and the profession has the word “Writing as part of it’s name, they must refer to the same thing. If only…

So in the end, it’s not your fault, but still, the problem needs to be addressed.

The solution is dead simple: Add the necessary skills to those you already own. Of course “Simple” and “easy” aren’t interchangeable words, so there’s a fair amount of study and practice involved. But that’s more of a rite-of-passage than a disaster. And here’s some good news: You’ll find the learning fun, like going backstage at the theater for the first time. And a lot of it will make you slap your forehead and say, “But that’s… It’s so obvious, why didn’t I see it for myself?

So…You enjoy writing. And you have the stories. You’ve even demonstrated the needed perseverance. All you need are a few of the techniques the pros take for granted. And in acquiring those skills I have a few specific recommendations:

First, for a feel for how different the approach to fiction is, the articles n my writing blog are meant to give an overview to the hopeful writer.

Next, pick up a copy of Dwight Swain’s, Techniques of the Selling Writer. It’s an older book, and talks about your typewriter. He also assumes, like the men of his time, that truly serious writers are male. But that aside, it is, by far, the best book on the nuts-and-bolts issues of writing scenes that sing to the reader.

The thing to keep in mind is that our primary goal is to make the reader feel and care, not be informed. As E. L. Doctorow put it: “Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader, not the fact that it’s raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.”

Was this what you hoped to hear? Of course not. And it stings…a lot. I’ve been there more than a time or two. But on the other hand, I sold not a word of my fiction till I learned what I’ve been telling you, and took action to acquire some professional skills. After all, for your whole life, you, and everyone you know, has been choosing professionally written and polished work. So the result of those skills is what we expect to see in the fiction we read. Given that, a few coins and some spent acquiring your writer’s education make a lot of sense. Right. And just maybe, if your students don’t leave school believing that they’re ready to write the next great American novel, they take the necessary steps and actually write it.

So jump in. And while you’re doing that, hang in there, and keep on writing.

Jay Greenstein https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/the-grumpy-old-writing-coach/