She's going to erupt.Any moment now she's going to erupt like a vicious volcano. She's done well though, half an hour and not a single tear; not a single sound; not a single move.Nothing.It's getting to her now,though; you can see it in her face; it's screwing up; it's going red; her eyes are watering.
There she goes: screaming like those little muddy things in Harry Potter 2; beating herself like a mad woman; tearing at her hair-I knew it was going to be like this.
There's no point in trying to calm her down, it's not going to work. She's on fire. How would you feel if you just saw the tiny coffin carrying your baby,your baby that you carried for nine months and had bonded with, be buried before you very eyes? Buried and gone forever. Extinct. You wouldn't be any different to this woman and you wouldn't want all this old hags trying to shut you up , acting as if they now what you must be going through. They should just leave her; she'll calm down when she wants to.
That took long enough; she's calmed down a little. She's still whimpering and whining and weeping but you can expect her to be completely silent and smiling after that spectacle. Poor cow, she'll get over it.
sorry for being a week late but I had problems with my Internet connection.
ReplyDeleteHey,
ReplyDeleteYou play very effectively with repetition and circumlocution in this piece ("She's going to erupt... erupt like a vicious volcano"; the trio of "single"s; the almost onomatopoeic alliteration of "whimpering and whining and weeping"). This is something that really stands out and makes the writing distinctive, and you clearly understand the power of using threes (as with the alliteration) without exploiting it so that it becomes hackneyed. Well done!
Similarly, you balance very well the longer, clause-dependent sentences with fragmentary ones. "Extinct" works brilliantly as a phrase on its own, especially after the flowing sentences beforehand. You've also employed the semi-colon to elegant effect (although perhaps it would be best to move away from the semi-colon "list" at the beginning of the piece - after the strength of the phrase starting "not a single tear...", the one beginning "It's getting to her now, though..." makes the semi-colon seem like a bit a of a device.
My suggestion here would be to introduce some sharper phrasing in the first paragraph, and jettison some of the more self-explanatory phrases - we know what it looks like when someone's about to cry, so perhaps a more striking description is called for. Maybe lose "it's screwing up; it's going red" to leave "It's getting to her now, though - you can see it in her face" - and then, in a separate sentence, the new, original metaphor for what her eyes look like.
In fact, the tone is a little ambiguous here, precisely because of the abundance of longer phrases. These can lead to a sense of detachment, which you imply directly with "Poor cow, she'll get over it". It's confusing, though, when the narrator is at once sympathetic ("How would you feel...?", "They should just leave her") at scornful ("There she goes: screaming like those muddy things...", "poor cow"). I don't know if you were presenting both the viewpoints of the "old hags" and a more sympathetic narrator, but if this is the case, you should separate out the distinct voices so as to signpost it to the reader; if not, I think you need to pick whether the narrator is wholly sympathetic or not; and if not, why not?
Overall, though, this is an evocative and well-constructed piece - I've really enjoyed reading your writing this year. Have a wonderful summer!
Penny
Thanks for the comment. greatly appreciated.
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