Excerpt from "Helium," a short story; criticism wanted

[grillparzerkarma]

“Step away from the doors miss, step away from the doors” squeaked the conductor.

Jenny gripped the metallic pole so tightly that her knuckles turned white. The car was empty and she was alone, finally. Nobody was there to notice her hand; how each nail was a different length, had a bitten and jagged contour unique to each thought; how pressing down and twisting the bottles of pills would change their identity every morning as they chipped off; how the pang of the new void reminded her that another day had passed.

Another day had passed since—but what had it really been? She watched the raindrops slide down the window as the thought faded into the drowning swings and neglected bicycles littering the backyards of passing houses.

And she realized: this was why it had been “different with Sommer” for Blake. When you stared into space like this, saying nothing when there was nothing to say—this was when the silence choked you, when a note would burst from the stereo and the heat of dying brain cells would rise and then condense on the windows.

In such a place, how could she—how could anyone—breathe?

Jenny’s mother had always told others that her vacant expression did not mean she was uninterested, or could not decipher the teacher’s marks on the whiteboard. To most this vacancy seemed a bitter, secretive distinction that she imposed between herself and her surroundings. Some became puzzled when they noticed this (was it a wall or just a drying contact lens?) and tried to see beyond their own reflections in her pupils; others simply looked away. “No,” her mother would insist, “she hears what you say but becomes so wrapped up in her thoughts that it takes her a moment to find a way out.”

The doors on her right suddenly opened and Jenny stumbled out onto the platform. She stopped for a moment to keep her feet from stepping onto the tracks beyond the yellow line. She stood there precariously balanced on the edge—what if the train came blaring round the corner, its headlights blinding and its metallic tongues clicking, hissing out of control? Couldn’t it stop its blabbering just a moment, just long enough for her eyelids to slip down under the weight of whispered potentials, lost thoughts, and fatigue?

And then she somehow knew: it was time, it was now.

 

[Dastrix Slogan]

This reminds me of a rainy day in London, I love the way you describe things. I would like to read more of this, I think you have left us hanging a bit here , perhaps reading the whole thing would explain more but I felt there was a too big a jump from the body to "it was time, it was now".

She watched the raindrops slide down the window as the thought faded into the drowning swings and neglected bicycles littering the backyards of passing houses.

Fav bit right there.

 

[grillparzerkarma]

I sent this in for a contest, so I wanted to know how just this section would sound. I have 9 different versions or so of the entire story, which is about 8 pages long (single-spaced). In one of them I had Jenny committ suicide at the end; but people had found that it wasn't needed. And, to complicate things, I wrote this story...and then last year somebody I knew (named Jenny) actually committed suicide. I had written it without any particular person in mind, so it was hard not to associate her with the story when I rewrote it later.

And nobody really has the patience to read 8 pages anyways.

 

[Jert]

I like the way this section reads. I like your use of colons and semicolons and hypens and your mix of sentence structures. Hmm...btw,what contest did you enter?

 

[grillparzerkarma]

the New England Young Writer's Conference, in Bread Loaf, VT (through Middlebury); 200 ppl from the country are accepted...its a weekend of writing workshops where you share your work or hear guest speakers and such.

However: (a) I won't know until beginning of March what the verdict is and (b) the conference is at the end of May.

 

[Jert]

Hmmm... maybe I can think of some more critz.

1st para:
-Uh, first off, just a grammar thing: your first semicolon should be a colon, shouldn't it? Not a big thing.

-Metallic pole? What about 'metal pole'. Seems more natural. You'd describe something that is questionably metal as 'metallic', but a bus pole would probably be metal, so I'd leave it out or just say 'metal'.

"how the pang of the new void reminded her that another day had passed."
Um, this sentence 'sounds nice' to me, but, I don't think it works. It is kind of hard for me to say out of context, but, this is the end of her day, right? She's going home on the bus? Then there would be no 'new void' to speak of; she's mentally focused on the end of the current day, not the day after.

2nd para:

" Another day had passed since—but what had it really been? She watched the raindrops slide down the window as the thought faded into the drowning swings and neglected bicycles littering the backyards of passing houses. "

1st sentence: Throws me off. Sorry. Are you going for the hypen being like a substituion for her saying 'another day had passed since [she killed herself] -- [but was it really a suicide]? Because as it is, this isn't obivous (I don't think). As you the writer reading your own stuff you have written, it makes sense to you, and you don't think of the context, but as for me, just some reader, this sentence doesn't work. Maybe, like, you might want to do something like:
Another day had passed since... the incident.
Or somesuch.

2nd sentence: 'Drowning swings' doesn't work for me and I think the sentence would work better with some commas, or something to break the flow a bit.
Something like: "She watched raindrops slide down the window as the thought faded; faded onto a swing being tossed in the wind, and faded onto the gears of a rusty, abandoned mountain bike that some kid must have forgotten in the park."


Well, that's it for me. I really ought to do some writing instead of writing about writing on some internet forum! My powers of procrastanation are almost unbelievable. I hope these comments help and seem reasonable to you. Good luck with the piece!

 

[grillparzerkarma]

People often find that my writing is "insightful" at moments, but that I don't provide clear transitions. When I edit my own writing, especially creative writing, I will have forgotten what thought process led me to my own statements. Then I attempt to fix it, but go off onto tangents about the details of the setting. I also use a lot of semi-colons and m-dashes (longer hyphens) because my thoughts are like a pile of photographs that accumulate. Or else they're lined up but they're not in chronological order, as if someone takes a comic book strip, cuts out each picture, mixes them up, and glues theme back together.

In the movie memento, the main guy has to reorieint himself every time he wakes up. The feeling you get from the reversed order of the scenes, that odd sensation that you've already seen him open the door a particular way, is a lot like the way I think. I wake up in an ordinary hotel room, just an ordinary room; I open the drawers even if there's nothing in them, just to check. But if there's a gun in one of the drawers of the bedside table, you know that something's happened, but you can't put your finger on the particular day it happened. Or if you recognize a face but can't remember the person's name and you KNOW them, but you can't talk to them because you can't prove how you know them.

So: if I'm going off onto a tangent like I just did in the last 1 or 2 paragraphs, someone just has to say where it is. From there I can explain it. Just tell me when to stop....lol, i get more hypocritical by the minute...

Anyways, thanks for the comments.