The CP-Edited Draft
Last week, our authors refined their own stories and posted their self-edited drafts.
This week, our writers swapped with Critique Partners (CPs), helping each other improve their stories by critiquing each others’ work.
This is sometimes the hardest week for writers because sharing work with others—especially strangers—can be daunting. There is the anxiety about whether others will enjoy our work, as well as the desire to give good critiques to our partners which will be honest and helpful.
But most writers can agree that the challenge is worth the reward. Not only do we learn about our own process when we provide feedback for others, we get to learn about our work through the eyes of new readers.
Sometimes, it’s difficult to see the big picture when working alone in our own head space. We miss things or forget that our audience aren’t mind readers when we’re too close to our words. This is when good CPs come in to save the day, pointing out our blind spots and giving us fresh perspectives. We may not always agree with the feedback or choose to implement them, but critiques can help us identify areas that may need a second mulling.
We applaud our writers for taking this next step in the process and are excited to witness their next drafts come closer to being the best they can be. Remember, it takes a ton of courage to be transparent about the ups and downs of processing feedback, so please join us in encouraging the authors by leaving comments on their blogs and tweeting about their stories using #WriterInMotion.
Next week, tune in to find out how editor feedback can further evolve these spectacular stories!
Ethereal Child
Antoinette Van Sluytman
There was something timeless about this place.
An elysian stroke of twilight upon a canvas, abandoned by an ancient civilization that had become muddled, its violent directions streaking like beautiful disorder across a world living in constant dichotomy of time and existence. Change and consistency.
A coexistence.
Never Look Back
Layton R. Turner
Bodee hiked up the mountainside, one arm wrapped around me, the weeds slapping against his bare knees. Even after the three-mile uphill trek, I’d be willing to bet his buns didn’t even burn. Stupid personal trainer glutes.
The Magic Jar
Kay S. Beckett
“We’re lost, aren’t we? Maybe I should Google directions…”
“Relax Ray. I’ve rode with my parents a million times, I know where we’re going.”
“That’s not the same as driving Luce…” muttered Ray. A two-hour car trip had ballooned into three, and they still hadn’t reached the turn off.
Headhunters
Lauren E. E. Persons
Prism was in the middle of polishing her head—an inverted glass pyramid which floated two inches above her neck—when a new hit flashed across her vision. She paused, Q-tip in hand, to take in the details.
Rescue me from the mire, do not let me sink
Sifa Poulton
You approach the cabin with the setting sun. It’s always setting on arrival; a place frozen in time, needing witnesses to fall back into the march of hours, days, seasons.
Thighs cramping from the long climb, you pause with the sun on your back. The air is chill with approaching night, your shadow lengthening before you, darkening the gorse.
The Bride
Vicky Walklate
Crouched atop the ugly mountainside building, Malthas stretched his leathery wings and studied his new bride. She stood immobile in the clearing, an alpine breeze billowing her clothes and hair. Crickets chirped in the grass and bats darted overhead. The tattoo on her wrist, his spiral emblem, whispered insistently.
Putting the Tertiaries to Rest
Izzy Varju
Jesse appears, screaming.
Her hands are knotted in her hair, frantically grasping at her head as if to keep it on her shoulders, and you don’t remember it being that red. It might have been the blood matting it, but upon closer inspection you decide it’s just auburn. The color settles.
“Who are you?” Jesse asks, patting her hands along her face before looking up at you. “Am I dead?”
We Who Paint The Trees
Léon Othenin-Girard
We who paint the trees, the leaves, the single hairs on spider legs, are often better off alone. Single-mindedly, we trail our brushes along the sunlight streams to fill the world with light. You cannot see us, and we resign our lives to the smaller loves;
The Bear’s Breeches Smell Slightly Sweet As They Rot
Maria L. Berg
I had never seen a man’s face change so fast. He stepped through the door, blocking our view, still laughing with his son. Then he saw me.
“You,” he said, then closed the door on us.
“Who is it, Daddy?” we heard from inside.
“That rude trespasser from the other day.”
The Birthday Wish
Jen Davenport
The sun dipped beneath the horizon, turning the sky into the perfect palette of pinks and purples. New painting ideas filled my thoughts. I couldn’t wait to get to my hotel room so I could break out one of the canvases I’d brought.
Shining Palais on a Hill
Maya Darjani
Four months after the attack, parts of the Ivory Palais still smoldered blue, the soft light of the gloaming adding an orange cast to the unearthly glow.
Sarai passed the checkpoints, one, two, three. Coffee in hand, she traversed the threshold into the stately office of the leader of the world.
Deep Networks
Oliver Elwood
Lewis found it hard to focus with her glasses sliding off her face, not to mention unbecoming for the chief scientist. She pushed them back into place and kept looking down at the raw data streaming across her monitor. Behind her, a scratchy loudspeaker continued its play-by-play of the action in the anomaly field.
“Signal strength decreasing ten percent… five… zero. Data stream terminated. Enco probe encoding complete. Enco signal lost. Deco Current will begin signal decode.”
Beyond Earth
Alexis Doyle
By the time the alert came down the line, it wasn’t needed, we’d all heard it. The sound itself was almost inaudible,a scraping whisper, a grinding against metal. Something was searching for us. When you hear a sound like that, it stops you dead. You listen so intently, you forget to breathe.
Smoke and Fog
Fariha Khayyam
The nostalgic scent of the rain and the lull of the rain drops thundering atop my roof wrapped me in a warm blanket of memories – those that were painful now. I was far, far away from the ones who jumped in the puddles with me and the ones who dried my hair after I’d become fully drenched.
The Right Wrong Path
Nicole Vane
It was supposed to be an hour-long hike—keyword supposed to. Quinn had managed to stray off the well-marked path and climb a completely non-beginner friendly hill. That was what her quads were screaming at her. Lifting her phone, she checked for a signal. No luck.
Pros & Cons
Amber Roberts
I refused to make another pro/con list. If I made a list, it meant he was at least partially right. I couldn’t give him the satisfaction.
It was supposed to be an easy job. Get in, get the goods, deliver, done. One final gig: The last hurrah before my retirement, a job to get The Life out of my system. Then, something…different. The whole deal: New name, new city, new gig.
Berekvam
Natasha Watts
“Come on, Shelby. You’re bumming me out.”
Dylan’s plea wheedles its way into my skull like a worm taking to soil. I shudder and look up. He’s across from me at the table, countryside flying by out the window of our Flåmsbana train car.
The Love Nest
Noreen
This is not happening.
The taxi driver is long gone and I check the address on the printed piece of paper. Rustic cottage on the east side of the village. Near the Durga temple. The air carries a chill, but sweat trickles down the middle of my back anyway
“Just get the signatures from the owner and get the hell out of here.”
It’s Watching
Ellie Doores
“You need to get off Twitter, see reality for a change.”
My twin brother Jack’s words echoed through my head as I watched the sun set slowly behind the mountains in the distance. The sky was filled with deep blues and purples, but the colors struck fear, not comfort.
Universe of Time
Amber Scott
My journey to the old shack in the mountains took much labour, much soul searching, much questing over the years. The hut was nestled high above civilization where vistas stretched further than I could see.
I breathed in the wind that carried the scent of flowers, haunting and sweet. I could hear it sighing among the granite tors, and a small bird singing a bewitching love song. It didn’t matter if I never returned to my own. I was an old man. I had nothing left but the sun and the rain, the stars and the earth beneath my feet.
Read more…
Unicorn Tracks
Erika F Rose
Cambriea crushed a sweet raspberry against the roof of her mouth as she stalked the woods, searching the ground and bushes for plants to forage. Berries were abundant, along with hazelnuts and mushrooms. What she couldn’t find was animal tracks. She needed to hunt, but the forest was still today.
Kindred
Anthony Eden
Once upon a time, not very long ago, a changeling-prince returned to the halls of his parents. Beneath the flowing green lay a vast kingdom that reached as far as the horizon and burrowed into a great mountain.
Another Woman
Neta Q
Three years after Danny created a Facebook profile, I filed for a divorce. My husband was a married man in the throes of a midlife crisis at the ripe old age of thirty-five.
My apologies for the delay in posting my CP-edited draft of THE SECRET TO HEAVEN but I had an unfortunate technical issue and had to wait for computer access to post the CP version. I loved their advice, and their adoration of my story which was kind and helpful on both accounts.
This piece, inspired by the awesome photography of a lonely house on a hill has become a kind of symbol for me of my own search for acceptance of the past and permission to move forward.
I hope you all like what I did with the work and suggestions they gave me. Thank you, Helena, Aprajita, and Vicky. Without further comment here is the revised
THE SECRET TO HEAVEN
THE SECRET TO HEAVEN
By Susan Burdorf
I’d forgotten how long the walk was.
I reached into my backpack for a bottle of water. Cold when I began three hours ago, its temperature was closer to lukewarm now.
I swallowed the liquid anyway, grateful for the momentary reprieve from the onslaught of memories.
Brian, my betrothed, had suggested this trip, insisted on it, actually.
“You need to face this history sometime, might as well be now.” He’d said in his gentle way when I protested I had too much work to do.
His blue eyes, usually so warm and tender, were serious and wide. A psychologist by profession, he knew all about repressed memories and the damage they could do if not dealt with.
“Joke’s on you, babe,” I thought as I stood on the hilltop just out of sight of my destination, “I’ve faced them and found them too hard. Too sad. Anything worth salvaging died with my mother last year.”
The only response to my comment was the wind tousling my short-cropped hair, sign of my independence from tradition. All my life my mother reminded me that women of my tribe always wore their hair long and loose until marriage. An antiquated and stereotypical view of the Native American girl that I refused to adhere to once I reached my teen years. One of the first of many things my mother and I argued about once I became old enough to assert my adolescent independence.
But that wasn’t why I was here.
“She did the best she could, under the circumstances,” Brian’s voice echoed the old argument in my head as I stared ahead, tears forming, blurring the image before me into a kaleidoscope of images that grew from deep green to the orange of the small house standing sentinel on the hill: a guardian of my youth, a home lost to time, a ghost-house of what might have been.
My legacy.
I half-smiled imagining a small girl playing in the dirt while a slender woman, dark hair falling in a single braid down her back, hums as she hangs laundry on the line stretched between the house and a pole long since gone.
The picture dissolved into the air with my next step.
I was struck once again by the beauty, isolation and desolation of this place. Hopeful flowers defied the scrub brush to my left, tall trees bowed in greeting as wind rippled their leaves, turning green to silver as the temperature cooled slightly and petrichor hinted of rain to come.
I breathed deeply.
The sharp crackle of the water bottle reminded me of how tightly I was holding it. I slipped it into the side pocket on the backpack and walked another few steps forward. Reaching out I touched the rough wall of the house, fingers tingling at the warmth left from the sun’s kiss.
Trailing my fingertips along the concrete wall I walked around until I found the front door of the small, square structure devoid of decoration or adornment. A ragged curtain covering the glassless window ruffled in the breeze as I opened the door.
Inside I stood still allowing my eyes to adjust from the brightness outside to the gray interior showing no sign of habitation.
I bit my lip as the memory flooded back of the day my mother lost her battle with the demons who gathered in the corners of the house and in her mind. The day my world turned upside-down and I lost my beautiful, fragile mother forever.
I fell to the knees, tears spilling onto the dirt floor as they had that fateful day. I rubbed my arm to relieve the haunting ache of bruises long since healed.
I pulled out my phone to call Brian just as the heavens above me opened with their song, rain pounded the tin roof in a melody I used to find comforting when I was enveloped in the arms of the one I most trusted and most feared.
“Mommy! Mommy, the thunder’s loud. I’m scared.”
Sobbing, I beg for the memory to leave me alone.
“Shhh, shhh, my little Wren. You have nothing to fear. Mommy’s here. The thunder’s only the sound of the heavens opening their secrets to you. Listen. Listen.”
Rocking on the dirt floor, I began humming her song; her face shimmering before me. Her arms around me, warm and slender and so fragile, held me through my fears, through my trembling and tears.
I wrapped my own arms around myself – a poor imitation of her embrace, moaning for her touch once more, wishing I could hear her voice, raspy and deep as she aged due to the many cigarettes she’d smoked, a habit she’d picked up in rehab.
They’d taken me from her that night, in the middle of the storm.
It’s only fitting I return her during one of her beloved storms to the place she loved most.
I reach into my backpack, brushing aside the letter from the funeral home. My fingers close on the mahogany box that bears all that remains of her.
Standing tall, wiping tears from my face I open the box sprinkling a little of her into the floor, “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. I love you, mommy. I miss you. I miss you most in the storms of life. I know the secret to heaven now. It’s you.”