Love the imagery of the paper disintegrating into the jeans pocket, and holding his mother with him in this way. Thanks again for an intriguing prompt to try - it’s a much longer sentence than I would usually write, but the forward energy in a sentence like this is interesting. Here’s mine:
She had poured a cup of coffee and added a touch of sweetener because she still couldn’t drink it black as her mother said she someday would and the coffee had cooled from steaming to lukewarm and then to icy and the mug felt as heavy and as cold as the smooth stones her father had taught her to skip across the pond.
Beautiful! And it's such an original way to convey that time has passed. From steaming, lukewarm, icy, and then you turn to the mug and I feel it cold, too, and heavy, and then that lovely turn to the way past. The bridge is the smooth stones and now we're with the protagonist and her father and I'm at the pond. I also love that at the beginning of this sentence, I'm going to move from the coffee (maybe in the kitchen) to a pond.
I love the second half of this sentence, but I found the opening clunky. Was it intentional? I'm in the midst of editing my novel so I do this all the time, edit things I'm reading. If this was my sentence I would have changed the opening to this: He folded the story and put it in the pocket of his jeans for a year and a half straight . But the idea that this was his mom's obituary and that slow slide into disintegration is so poignant.
Maybe it makes sense in context because the previous sentence is so short. This is the opening to the short story:
Mal Vester had a pa who died in the Australian desert after drinking all the water from the radiator of his Land Rover. His momma had died just like the coroner said she had, even though he had lost the newspaper clipping that would have proved it. Not lost exactly. He had folded up the story and put it in the pocket of his jeans for one year and one half straight because they were the only pants he had and the paper had turned from print into lint and then into the pocket itself and then the jeans had become as thin and as grey as the egg skins his momma had put over his boils when he was little.
I also think the long sentence conveys the passage of time. And, he's 11 years old and children often think/speak in long compound sentences connected by the conjunction "and." But in the end, your ear doesn't like the sound and that's what you'd go with-- a sentence that appeals to your ear.
Thanks for the explanation. It sounds like a great story. Now I want to read it. I'm probably hung up on slimming down my sentences, cutting word count. But like you said if the purpose is to convey the slow, clunky thought process of a child, then this works.
I love how the obituary becomes the jeans which become the egg skins, completing a circle (his mother is gone, yet she remains, soothing or healing his pain).
Drake lived in the cabin how long he wasn’t certain but long enough the green plastic tarp on the roof crinkled frayed and separated into its constituent parts and he’d had to abandon the lake that used to be a living room for the kitchen a relatively comfortable reverse oasis where Christina his last girlfriend had lived for several months while transitioning from their bedroom (now a brook) to a new room in some doubtless more intact dwelling that Drake in his less morose moments imagined must be as dry and unadventurous as her now uncomplicated life.
Love the imagery of the paper disintegrating into the jeans pocket, and holding his mother with him in this way. Thanks again for an intriguing prompt to try - it’s a much longer sentence than I would usually write, but the forward energy in a sentence like this is interesting. Here’s mine:
She had poured a cup of coffee and added a touch of sweetener because she still couldn’t drink it black as her mother said she someday would and the coffee had cooled from steaming to lukewarm and then to icy and the mug felt as heavy and as cold as the smooth stones her father had taught her to skip across the pond.
Beautiful! And it's such an original way to convey that time has passed. From steaming, lukewarm, icy, and then you turn to the mug and I feel it cold, too, and heavy, and then that lovely turn to the way past. The bridge is the smooth stones and now we're with the protagonist and her father and I'm at the pond. I also love that at the beginning of this sentence, I'm going to move from the coffee (maybe in the kitchen) to a pond.
Thank you!
I love the second half of this sentence, but I found the opening clunky. Was it intentional? I'm in the midst of editing my novel so I do this all the time, edit things I'm reading. If this was my sentence I would have changed the opening to this: He folded the story and put it in the pocket of his jeans for a year and a half straight . But the idea that this was his mom's obituary and that slow slide into disintegration is so poignant.
Maybe it makes sense in context because the previous sentence is so short. This is the opening to the short story:
Mal Vester had a pa who died in the Australian desert after drinking all the water from the radiator of his Land Rover. His momma had died just like the coroner said she had, even though he had lost the newspaper clipping that would have proved it. Not lost exactly. He had folded up the story and put it in the pocket of his jeans for one year and one half straight because they were the only pants he had and the paper had turned from print into lint and then into the pocket itself and then the jeans had become as thin and as grey as the egg skins his momma had put over his boils when he was little.
I also think the long sentence conveys the passage of time. And, he's 11 years old and children often think/speak in long compound sentences connected by the conjunction "and." But in the end, your ear doesn't like the sound and that's what you'd go with-- a sentence that appeals to your ear.
Thanks for the explanation. It sounds like a great story. Now I want to read it. I'm probably hung up on slimming down my sentences, cutting word count. But like you said if the purpose is to convey the slow, clunky thought process of a child, then this works.
I love how the obituary becomes the jeans which become the egg skins, completing a circle (his mother is gone, yet she remains, soothing or healing his pain).
I did too--and it surprised me when it turned the direction back to when he was a boy.
Drake lived in the cabin how long he wasn’t certain but long enough the green plastic tarp on the roof crinkled frayed and separated into its constituent parts and he’d had to abandon the lake that used to be a living room for the kitchen a relatively comfortable reverse oasis where Christina his last girlfriend had lived for several months while transitioning from their bedroom (now a brook) to a new room in some doubtless more intact dwelling that Drake in his less morose moments imagined must be as dry and unadventurous as her now uncomplicated life.