Hey Soli,
I read your story and enjoyed it. You paint a picture of the beach and ocean that is a great use of imagery.
The story has a nice pace that rolls along very well.
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There use to be a little shack, facing out to sea, on one of the beaches over on the west coast of the great country
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The opening sentence is cluttered. Where this sentence might it in the middle, as an opening sentence its clunky. I would rearrange it bit.
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The summer sun had bleached the wood pale and splintery and dry and the salty winter wind had stripped off whatever paint had decked the planks.
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You are trying to squeeze to much description in this sentence. The conjunction 'and' is used 3 times in 5 words. I am not sure about decking the planks with paint.
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Men started turning up at his apartment at all hours of the night saying he owed Greiber Max a hefty sum and that there'd be a lot of trouble if he didn't get the money
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Never once does the old man ask " What for?". That was something that bothered me.
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He was waiting I reckon, waiting for that big roaring sea to come and eat him up in his house with all his clocks.
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"I reckon" seems out of place here.
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The water was still and the wind brushed the twilight calm and fresh
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The "Twilight" here is described as being fresh. It could leave you refreshed or be a sight that was refreshing.
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"You make clocks? You made all of these?" I asked.
"Not anymore."
"Why not?"
"When the sea took my son I didn't really feel like it."
"I see. So what do you do all day?"
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At some points the dialog doesn't really hang together.
He asked if he made all these clocks and his answer was not anymore.
They don't seem to talk to each other.
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"They said he owed Greiber Max a lot of money and he'd owed him this money for a long time and he hadn't paid, and in fact he'd taken a run, so it was up to you to take care of things."
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Run on sentence, needs some periods.
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I looked at Henry, my brother, and he looked back at me.
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Consider,
" I looked at my brother Henry and he looked back at me."
Eliminating wordy sentences and unnecessary puncuation will make this piece a lot cleaner.
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And then when I was done thinking about that, all I wanted to think about was swimming through a blue ocean with cool water streaming from my hair and over my skin
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Here again,
"All I wanted to do was swim through a blue ocean with cool water streaming from my hair and over my skin"
The beginning part is erroneous to the sentence. He has told us what he thought, now what does he want to do.
The scene at the end with the old man nailing together the boat was good
I liked the work and parts were captivating, but a good re-write is in order.
Thanks
This is a short story I have recently wrote, I was going for a God theme.
