Life Untitled (2) - Writers Forum

Tunga · 02-15-2005, 09:48 AM

I woke up two hours early this morning, and this was the result. It carries on from part one (it's only divided by when it gets written, the parts are not actually any more seperate than the chapters within parts...if that makes sense).

Part 1: http://www.writingforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=11618

As before, it's not a great piece, read the bit at the top of the first part for what it's all about. Got some nice feedback last time so I hope some of you enjoy it.

For reference (it's kind of relevant to the bits where I mention kids/adults and other stuff), I'm currently 19, studying Computer Science at Birmingham University (England).

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Jesus Love Is Very Wonderful

This chapter could be about religion, but girls are more interesting.
I understand religion.

My primary school was tiny and I claimed my rightful place at the top of the class. It’s amazing how many people you can impress with the ability to multiply numbers. I remember finding out someone was one maths book ahead of me in Year 2, and spent the next week working twice as fast in order to overtake him again. It wasn’t about the 7+2=9 addition exercises, it was about the possibility of being replaced, and I wasn’t about to let that happen.

My Year 3 teacher told me I couldn’t write, “My least favourite book is the Bible because I don’t believe in God” and made me change it to “My least favourite book is the Bible because it has too many long words in it”.
This is the reason I don’t believe in God.

One time we told this kid to piss off and his Mum went crazy at us. It took me a few years to realise how proud I was of that. It’s amazing how much power you can have over people at the age of 9.

This isn’t sounding much like a love story I know, but I’m getting to that. I should probably try and make things flow a bit better, but you don’t want my life story. Things are easier to understand when they make no sense.

The main thing about my Primary School is that it was Church of England. What this basically meant is that everyday we had to go and sit in the hall for half an hour while the headmaster told us some stupid story that nobody listened to. Eventually he ran out of stories and had to repeat them. There were two main ways to get out of having to sing Jesus songs. The first was to get kicked out of the assembly, and the second was to take up the recorder. There were people who tried the first method most days, but that just wasn’t my style, and so I ended up sitting at the front of every Assembly with one guy, six girls and a folder of Jesus music.

It’s important to realise that I couldn’t actually play the recorder very well. The problem was, most of the time we were playing the same middle range notes, and so it seemed easier to randomly guess the extreme notes than to actually learn them. There is no note on the recorder that is player with all of the holes uncovered, but if I ran out of fingers to remove I failed to see what else I was supposed to do so that’s what got played. Actually this isn’t important to realise at all, and what I’m actually getting at here has nothing to do with my musical ability.

Looking back, I now know that this was the first of the female dominated groups that I always ended up in the middle of. There’s nothing really of interest that happened within this group, but then that’s probably true of my entire time at the school.

There are more stories I could tell, but the recorder girls seem the most relevant.
Girls always seem to be relevant.

Like People Only Smaller

There’s not much to be said here but it’s an important point that needs to be made.

Children are not immediately wrong simple because you are older than them.

Adulthood is not an excuse for a overly long power trip. If you want someone to boss around, you should have gone into management.

But wait, you’re paying the bills, right? You’re working long hours while the government steals all your money?

Whatever.

Now you realise growing up isn’t all it’s made out to be.

The sooner you accept that children can be right about things you don’t understand, the better. Because then you might realise that actually, children are a lot like people. Only smaller.

I managed to get the chapter title into the actual chapter. I’m getting better at this writing thing.

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I know it seems a little slow but it is going somewhere. It will take another few chapters and then it should get more interesting.

All thoughts and comments welcome.

(Can someone tell me whether it's better to post this onto the end of the previous thread, or to make a new one like this, or to repost the whole thing including the previous part in a new thread. I wasn't sure which would be preferred, but I can do whichever next time.)

Tunga

valeca · 02-15-2005, 10:48 AM

Well, I can tell you were born and raised across the pond

Knowing that, I'm guessing that's the audience you're going for. If not, you might want to reconsider the use of Year, maths and realise. I know that's what they're refered to/spelled as over there, but if you're going for the north american audience, grade, math and realize will work better. (but they're fine if you want to leave them, it's a personal choice of the writer. You've used them properly)

I understand you've said that it's going somewhere if we wait a few more chapters, but you're running the risk of losing the reader at the beginning. I got very confused jumping all over the place and was unable to see why certain points were made or follow where you were trying to go. It was all very random.

one minor spelling mistake:

Quote:

Children are not immediately wrong simple because you are older than them.

Simply.

And this line:

Quote:

Because then you might realise that actually, children are a lot like people. Only smaller.

It made me laugh. I was under the impression children ARE people

Maybe you're meaning "Children are a lot like adults. Only smaller."

There were some really good lines in here.

Quote:

There are more stories I could tell, but the recorder girls seem the most relevant.
Girls always seem to be relevant.

Quote:

This chapter could be about religion, but girls are more interesting.
I understand religion.

Out of everything written here, these two bits give me the best understanding of where you might be going with this piece

As for posting..you could simply add onto your first post as you go along. That way people will recognize and remember what it is you've written, and have an easy reference if they forget something. But the choice is yours.

Good luck.

mammamaia · 02-16-2005, 08:54 AM

it's subtly funny stuff... as is to be expected from across the pond, as british humor is not as blatant as the american brand...

i thought the children/people line quite good and i'm sure you meant it to be poking fun at adults who don't treat the poor little ones like people, so i'm at odds with val on that...

as for minor flaws, you need to do a good proofread before posting if you don't want to be called out on things like an 'e' instead of a 'y' and the first goof i noticed right off in your title... 'jesus' needs an apostrophe to make it possessive...

piddling little stuff aside, you have a flair for humor that taps one gently on the shoulder instead of bashing heads with a 2x4, the kind of stuff that causes one to do a double take and laugh maybe a line or two past the punchline, accompanied by a palm smack to the head for not catching it sooner...

your work reads like stand-up comedy in a club for the more intellectually inclined... good work!... i like it...

as for how to post more of it, what is 'it' intended to be?... if you're writing an erma bombeck-style book, posting the whole thing will make it unacceptable to a lot of publishers, so i'd advise you to stop here and just perfect your act and start shopping it around...

i'm a great lover of wry, sarcastic humor, so
let me know if i can be of any help...

hugs, maia
maia3maia@hotmail.com

Tunga · 02-17-2005, 08:32 AM

I'm not trying to get anything published, I just write this stuff because it's fun and sometimes it helps me sort stuff out in my head. It's not that I've had a bad life, but a lot of stuff in my past is quite heavy on my mind I guess. I'd like to make something about how I feel about stuff right now.

Because of this, the posting the whole thing here is not really an issue. The piece will most likely only be around 20 pages, hardly a novel

. I'd rather some people got to read it and hope some of them will enjoy it. By the end you'll probably know me better than most of my real life friends!

This goes for UK laguage thing too, not too bothered and I'll just stick to my versions. It's a good point though, about writing in general. Hadn't really ever thought about that (and the US market being much bigger so arguably more important too).

It jumping all over the place is generally deliberate. I want it to be slightly confusing, though perhaps I over used that a bit. I'd like thing to come together more as the piece goes on, and things begin to make more sense.

Simple is a mistake, thanks for that. There's always one that manages to slip through

. "Jesus" is actually deliberate, it's a reference to the fact that there was a song in which every would literally sing "Jesus love...". Only makes sense to me really I guess, heh.

The "adult"/"people" thing is deliberate too. Sometimes being a kid felt like you were a different species

. Also I once heard someone say "I've just thought, kids are a lot like people...only smaller" so I stole it because I thought it was funny (and true).

More to come soon hopefully

. Writing is so much better than lectures on software/hardware interaction anyway

. Maybe I'm the only Computer Science student with an A-Level in English Literature! Hardly a complementary subject, but I wasn't about to give up Shakespeare for something more "useful" like Physics. Actually I have a lecture now, off I go...

Thanks for the comments,

Tunga

valeca · 02-17-2005, 08:42 AM

I agree that you should keep both the children/adult thing (since I laughed at it the first time, I should have caught on it ws intentional..lol) and the UK language. It does give it flavour. I wasn't sure where your target audience was.

"(and the US market being much bigger so arguably more important too)". *I'm going to put this in with the children/adult thing

Since I'm not American either.*

You do run the risk of losing the reader early on with jumping so much, even if it's intentional. Maybe just tone that down a bit and see it you can maintain the confused feel of the character without transfering it to the reader

I'm glad you write for YOU!

Best place to start, imo.