THE REVIEW

ADVERSARIAL ADVERBS


Jason, Ron, Bob, Jim, Danny and Margaret all joined me Wednesday night for another awesome meeting. They just keep getting better and better, both the meetings and the writers. Unfortunately, Gemma was unable to join us as she is recovering from injuries recently suffered handling her dog. Bob and Jim returned copies of her manuscript after reading it, and I have those copies here. We hope Gemma is feeling better and will be able to join us again soon.

I started the meeting with my latest news. My short story, “His Rant”, was short-listed in the Polar Expressions contest, and consequently will be included in their anthology “Beneath The Canopy”. This story was written several years ago when we were drawing weekly writing prompts from The Bucket, and this prompt was about somebody living over a 3-car garage. I tweaked it so the word count worked for the contest, and there you have it. Don’t throw out anything you write. You never know when some opportunity may arise for submitting it.

Margaret read the Epilogue from “Blow Up The Castle”, which tells us what happened to the three reverends after 1936. During WWII and after, their lives changed considerably. Rev. Peabody and Marie married and went to live with his nephew Hamish, in the castle. Rev. Peasly emigrated to Canada after Barker died. And Rev. Peacock, Marigold, and Joey the parrot moved to the seaside. All three reverends passed away on the same day. And those walking the beach can still hear Joey calling “Blow up the castle!”

Danny read his chapter “Did It Hurt Right Away?” While working the Nascar infield, Danny suffered a badly broken left foot when a 400 lb. battleaxe (I don’t know what that is?) fell on it. This chapter gave us very graphic descriptions of the pain and gory medical procedures when the bones became infected. Fortunately, Danny still has his foot, attached to his leg, that is.

Ron read us his Chapter 1, where we are introduced to Joseph and his wife, Julia, in Hungary. They are farmers, in their fifties, with five children aged 12 to 21. Although they own some land of their own, they work for a large farm to earn enough to support themselves. We see them cutting the grain with scythes, the method of harvest at that time. But Joseph is told there won’t be much work the coming year, as the large farm is bringing in machinery to do what many men did by hand. That’s when the decision is made to emigrate to Canada, where free land is being offered.

Jason read us Chapter 3 of his novel. The setting is the reception after the funeral. The father removes himself from the crowd and sits alone. Laura plays hostess to a number of elderly friends of the deceased. The two sons behave like typical teenaged boys. Greg is snarky to his father. Dave criticizes him. The two argue. Greg is hot for Jody, a neighbourhood girl, and he asks her if she believes in heaven. This is a difficult question for her as her parents are both dead. The two wrestle, but Dave interrupts them. This chapter shows us more of the family dynamics.
Jim shared with us five different drafts of the same sentence, where he was trying to eliminate adverbs. The original sentence was: When she quickly turned her head, her hair seemed to stretch and elongate then as quickly return to its tightly packed state as her curls fought centrifugal force. The final sentence read: With each quick turn of the head, her hair stretched and elongated then snapped back to its original state. What a process rewriting can be! We agreed maybe we should all go and read some Hemingway to learn about succinct condensation of verbiage. Jim admitted he had just reread “The Old Man And The Sea”. Hilarious. The following is Jim’s journaling about being plagued by adverbs:

Adverbs are my enemy! As soon as I wrestle one to the ground there is another before me, taunting. It is a never-ending fight and I tire of the battle. What else can I do? I struggle on and on, forcing one to submit and then another.

One day I will defeat them! I will complete a manuscript barren of the (bloody) buggers. Then I will laugh at them, when I have faced them all down.

Right on, Jim. We’re all behind you!

Bob didn’t have time to write anything between baseball games, but he kindly fixed glasses of ice water, and served cookies and banana bread for me. He is always a help in that department. Many thanks.

And thanks to all those who donated for the domain name. Much appreciated.

Next meeting will be here at my place at 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 16th. Hope to see you then, and by all means, bring your Muse.

Lisa