Instructor Response

She was driving back home and on her way from the hospital, when she looked herself up in the front view mirror, noticing the glamorous smile surfacing her lips from beneath her heart, and reflecting across the shiny surface. “I am in heaven” She happily thought. The world was a happier place for delivering her an extraordinary joy, and a remarkable feeling that she herself could not explain. Not enough words in the universe seemed sufficient to portray the glowing sparks in her eyes, or the rosy hint that covered her pink cheeks. She have waited so long to receive the miracle of life and now that she has, she was granted the best of gifts, yet the most blessed one of all. Perhaps her unique silence was the best artistic painting to have presented her joyful sense of living, without the speech of words to caption it.  (Nice. You’ve introduced your character and the reader knows about her. Great.)

 

The minute she pulled in her driveway, her heart skipped a beat, when she spotted a yellow envelope on the front door, waiting for her to uncover its content. The return address label read her husband’s lawyer mailing information, and that could not have been a good sign. Suddenly and without a previous warning, she panicked as she stood in silence holding the intact object hesitating to open it. Perhaps it was it a random application request?  of some kind she thought, but if that was the case, she wouldn’t be shaking the way she was while debating between tearing in it open, or forever tossing it away. Fifteen minutes later, she found herself sitting down on the from door steps reading through the endless yet sore words that were printed all over her the place. “I can’t believe this is happening to me.. I must be dreaming.” She switched to denial mode. Her hands shivered with a sudden coldness before running through her weak spine for a final dose of agony.  Her heart was racing the infinite finish line, while her breath choked her in the throat, pulling her closer to the approaching cliff of hell.

 

Feeling nothing but the numbness of death, she dropped the cursed journal of the past five years of her life, leaving it behind to burn up the future of dreams without a single fight. She was no longer the vivid sunshine of the skies, nor the fresh breeze of wind. In a blink of an eye she was nothing more than a tormented soul, dying of a compassionate thirst and a merciful hunger. Letting go of the one man she truly loved, was the last nail in her coffin, (cliché)  drilling through her bones with misery and regret. He left her without closure, but this time, he left forever. There was no going back regardless of the passionate feelings that she carried around for him, and only him throughout the years. Perhaps she was kidding herself all along, and now that the picture of her failed marriage became so clear, she knew that they will no longer ravel the imaginary relationship (is this true?)  of theirs when in fact she was the only one who tried her best and beyond to overcome his infidelity and foxy lies. Although he did not deserve her pure love, he was the love of her life, even when she wasn’t his. “This must be the end. I can feel it approaching.”

 

With heavy pains and a greater agony, she dragged her overwhelmed feet along the sidewalk of the unknown path, hoping to find the proper place to breakdown at, when she looked around her to find herself standing over the mighty bridge. Beneath the solid structure that she was standing over, lied lay (learn and use the differences between the verbs lie and lay) the deep water of the sailing sea. The waves had an outrageous breakdown of their own while screaming to claim justice. Her tears were still intact in the nest of fear, the fear of following her natural instincts. Although she forced herself to cry and release all of her anger and grief, she could not shed a single tear. Her spirit was broken, rather empty of emotions while she was in desperate need of crying her pains out loud. “Perhaps I don’t have to live through this pain. Perhaps there is a way to end it.” She then surrendered to her ugly fate.

 

Suddenly, the happy world of hers became a living nightmare when white clouds turned black, and day light turned into night. Having served with divorce papers just minutes after learning that she was expecting, was not at all expected. Would it be justice for her to fight the battle of becoming a parent all on her own? She couldn’t dare to ask herself that question, afraid to learn the answer. Would it be fair to use the unborn child as bate to keep the marriage from falling apart yet again? And who knows for how long this time. Sure enough it wouldn’t, and not because she didn’t love him enough to try and make it work, but because her self-esteem and mainly her pride have suffered enough through the process of reconciliation, and on more than one occasion. Therefore enough was enough already. Perhaps she felt a sudden urge to save herself from falling apart, on some superficial level she wanted to sink down deeper, and forever end her pain. 

 

“Forgive me God, for I have sinned.” Knowing she was walking the last steps of her long road, she closed her eyes so tightly, held in her breath for one last time, while secretly wishing for the traveling waves to catch her when she falls. She walked close to the edge, holding her broken heart inside her trembling hands, feeling the cold breeze brushing through her hair, before jumped into the deep waters. Not only that she hit rock bottom, she was now drifting into the underworld of the greater sea, unaware of her dusky destination, yet alone her secret pain which was about to affirm for her, her written destiny. Broken in heart and spirit, she sailed away behind the ocean, folding with each passing wave a painful chapter of the life, in which herself decided to finish, before the approaching of the ending.

 

Wow! Reader feels her dilemmas and her pains. You have a delightful, poetic style rich with metaphors, images, and passionate language. Conflict well established. All nicely accomplished.

 

Your story base is: woman gets divorce papers. She’s pregnant and her husband does not know. She kills herself. The structure is telling a few minutes of her life, showing the reader through lyrical prose how the woman is thinking and feeling and how she comes to the kill herself. Effective for many readers. But some readers may feel the piece is overwritten. Too much flowery language mixed with clichés and metaphors that strain to be admired. I’ve deleted some of what I felt wasn’t needed. I think more could be done by an objective editor. But most of all, I think you should run this piece by people whose opinions you can trust for the effect it has on them. Go to a workshop where students critique. Or ask friends. Do they know what’s going on? Do they like the style and story, or would they suggest changes that would make them remember the piece and read it over and over for enjoyment? What would they suggest? 

 

All writers have readers. Writers need to find out who those readers are and what they enjoy. Every writer has many readers who do not like their writing for all sorts of reasons: they don’t like certain types of authors, they like specific genres that are different than yours but still feel free to criticize, they are offended by certain content, the don’t like mystic reality, etc. Those readers should be listened to but not necessarily change the writer’s style or writing. For valuable comments as a beginning writer, find those readers who are your readers, and then listen to them closely for clues as to what you need to do to please them.

 

Great work!

 

Bill Coles