![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hmpfSince this has been public from the moment of its birth, I've decided to make the next step public, too. So, here it is: Sam bitter!fic, after the first round of rewriting. Will probably only be of interest to people who are interested in the MacSlow writing process. ;-)
In some cases there may be Verschlimmbesserungen. (Now there's a word for the 'German is better than English is better than German' page...)
And this thing still has no title except for the oblique joke, stolen from Max Goldt, of "Auf dem Sprung in die Tiefe verhungern" ("Starving on the jump down", more or less.)
Anyway, here goes:
***
And then it's suddenly very simple:
his feet slapping on concrete, the last step,
the last,
pushing off with all his power,
and there's only the great blue,
and gravity,
and it's all right,
no space for anything but joy in this sky,
it's too late,
(a relief),
too late for regrets,
too late for a change of mind,
and it's a relief,
to feel the air rush past,
to know this is it,
to know it's over, it's done, he's done what he could,
he's done his best,
and his mum will understand, she understands,
she will -
[Ruth Tyler understands: that she's failed him; that she failed to see the sky waiting at the back of his eyes; understands that she doesn't matter; and she'll go on, of course, she's done it before, once, twice, she can do it again, pick herself up another time and go on, she needs to believe that, and sometimes she does believe that, sometimes – and then she stands by a mound of earth that's still fresh and she knows that this time is different, and she straightens her back, raises her chin, and there's no place to go, no place to go at all.]
- and he's falling,
too late now,
falling,
and it's so good
to be going, going,
almost gone,
too late to do anything,
it's over already,
it's over,
the sky gone,
only ground now,
jumping up,
rushing up,
(a relief),
and there's nothing here for him,
nothing, nobody -
[Maya has had a lunch date, another pointless exercise in rebound, and of course anyone should be better than Sam, Sam was unsalvageable from the first, and yet, and yet - and there's an ambulance in front of the building, a small crowd, a colleague turns, sees her, moves to apprehend her, and she knows, she just knows; she trips, runs, pushes through the cluster and reaches the centre just as someone says 'it's over', sinks to her knees as frantic activity is replaced by a stillness that radiates outwards, takes his hand and feels a hand on her shoulder and says, to no one in particular, 'I'm his girlfriend', surprised.]
- and there's
no way to turn back,
no reason,
this is liberation,
this is -
and the last millisecond takes forever,
a glorious, golden eternity,
and then
the ground's there and
things burst, tear and break
and his blood's free to fill spaces inside him
as his brain quietly gives out
and that's that.
***
Yeah? Nay? Ms. I'm-never-wrong? ;-)
(I think I may have accidentally removed some of the 'flying' sensation from it with this step, because I think that was largely created by some of the padding I removed. Which, if true, leaves me with an interesting dilemma...)
ETA: And here's version number three, with new padding:
***
And then it's suddenly very simple:
his feet slapping on concrete, the last step,
the last,
pushing off with all his power,
and there's only the great blue,
and gravity,
and it's all right,
no space for anything but joy in this sky,
it's too late,
(a relief),
too late for regrets,
too late for a change of mind,
and it's such a relief,
to feel the air rush past,
to know this is it,
to know it's over, it's done, he's done what he could,
he's done his best,
and his mum will understand, she understands,
she will -
[Ruth Tyler understands: that she's failed him; that she failed to see the sky waiting at the back of his eyes; understands that she doesn't matter; and she'll go on, of course, she's done it before, once, twice, she can do it again, pick herself up another time and go on, she needs to believe that, and sometimes she does believe that, sometimes – and then she stands by a mound of earth that's still fresh and she knows that this time is different, and she straightens her back, raises her chin, and there's no place to go, no place to go at all.]
- and he's falling,
too late now,
falling,
and it's so good
to be going, going,
gone,
almost gone,
too late to do anything,
it's over already,
it's over,
the sky gone,
only ground now,
jumping up,
rushing up,
(a relief),
and there's nothing here for him,
nothing, nobody -
[Maya has had a lunch date, another pointless exercise in rebound, and of course anyone should be better than Sam, Sam was unsalvageable from the first, and yet, and yet - and there's an ambulance in front of the building, a small crowd, a colleague turns, sees her, moves to apprehend her, and she knows, she just knows; she trips, runs, pushes through the cluster and reaches the centre just as someone says 'it's over', sinks to her knees as frantic activity is replaced by a stillness that radiates outwards, takes his hand and feels a hand on her shoulder and says, to no one in particular, 'I'm his girlfriend', surprised.]
- and there's
no way to turn back,
no reason,
this is liberation,
this is -
and the last millisecond takes forever,
a glorious, golden eternity,
and then
the ground's there and
things burst, tear and break
and his blood's free to fill spaces inside him
as his brain quietly gives out
and that's that.
***
And I think this is the point where I decide that this needs a month in a drawer.
In some cases there may be Verschlimmbesserungen. (Now there's a word for the 'German is better than English is better than German' page...)
And this thing still has no title except for the oblique joke, stolen from Max Goldt, of "Auf dem Sprung in die Tiefe verhungern" ("Starving on the jump down", more or less.)
Anyway, here goes:
***
And then it's suddenly very simple:
his feet slapping on concrete, the last step,
the last,
pushing off with all his power,
and there's only the great blue,
and gravity,
and it's all right,
no space for anything but joy in this sky,
it's too late,
(a relief),
too late for regrets,
too late for a change of mind,
and it's a relief,
to feel the air rush past,
to know this is it,
to know it's over, it's done, he's done what he could,
he's done his best,
and his mum will understand, she understands,
she will -
[Ruth Tyler understands: that she's failed him; that she failed to see the sky waiting at the back of his eyes; understands that she doesn't matter; and she'll go on, of course, she's done it before, once, twice, she can do it again, pick herself up another time and go on, she needs to believe that, and sometimes she does believe that, sometimes – and then she stands by a mound of earth that's still fresh and she knows that this time is different, and she straightens her back, raises her chin, and there's no place to go, no place to go at all.]
- and he's falling,
too late now,
falling,
and it's so good
to be going, going,
almost gone,
too late to do anything,
it's over already,
it's over,
the sky gone,
only ground now,
jumping up,
rushing up,
(a relief),
and there's nothing here for him,
nothing, nobody -
[Maya has had a lunch date, another pointless exercise in rebound, and of course anyone should be better than Sam, Sam was unsalvageable from the first, and yet, and yet - and there's an ambulance in front of the building, a small crowd, a colleague turns, sees her, moves to apprehend her, and she knows, she just knows; she trips, runs, pushes through the cluster and reaches the centre just as someone says 'it's over', sinks to her knees as frantic activity is replaced by a stillness that radiates outwards, takes his hand and feels a hand on her shoulder and says, to no one in particular, 'I'm his girlfriend', surprised.]
- and there's
no way to turn back,
no reason,
this is liberation,
this is -
and the last millisecond takes forever,
a glorious, golden eternity,
and then
the ground's there and
things burst, tear and break
and his blood's free to fill spaces inside him
as his brain quietly gives out
and that's that.
***
Yeah? Nay? Ms. I'm-never-wrong? ;-)
(I think I may have accidentally removed some of the 'flying' sensation from it with this step, because I think that was largely created by some of the padding I removed. Which, if true, leaves me with an interesting dilemma...)
ETA: And here's version number three, with new padding:
***
And then it's suddenly very simple:
his feet slapping on concrete, the last step,
the last,
pushing off with all his power,
and there's only the great blue,
and gravity,
and it's all right,
no space for anything but joy in this sky,
it's too late,
(a relief),
too late for regrets,
too late for a change of mind,
and it's such a relief,
to feel the air rush past,
to know this is it,
to know it's over, it's done, he's done what he could,
he's done his best,
and his mum will understand, she understands,
she will -
[Ruth Tyler understands: that she's failed him; that she failed to see the sky waiting at the back of his eyes; understands that she doesn't matter; and she'll go on, of course, she's done it before, once, twice, she can do it again, pick herself up another time and go on, she needs to believe that, and sometimes she does believe that, sometimes – and then she stands by a mound of earth that's still fresh and she knows that this time is different, and she straightens her back, raises her chin, and there's no place to go, no place to go at all.]
- and he's falling,
too late now,
falling,
and it's so good
to be going, going,
gone,
almost gone,
too late to do anything,
it's over already,
it's over,
the sky gone,
only ground now,
jumping up,
rushing up,
(a relief),
and there's nothing here for him,
nothing, nobody -
[Maya has had a lunch date, another pointless exercise in rebound, and of course anyone should be better than Sam, Sam was unsalvageable from the first, and yet, and yet - and there's an ambulance in front of the building, a small crowd, a colleague turns, sees her, moves to apprehend her, and she knows, she just knows; she trips, runs, pushes through the cluster and reaches the centre just as someone says 'it's over', sinks to her knees as frantic activity is replaced by a stillness that radiates outwards, takes his hand and feels a hand on her shoulder and says, to no one in particular, 'I'm his girlfriend', surprised.]
- and there's
no way to turn back,
no reason,
this is liberation,
this is -
and the last millisecond takes forever,
a glorious, golden eternity,
and then
the ground's there and
things burst, tear and break
and his blood's free to fill spaces inside him
as his brain quietly gives out
and that's that.
***
And I think this is the point where I decide that this needs a month in a drawer.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
In Three Parts! ZOMG! Part 1.
Date: 2007-04-21 07:55 am (UTC)Since we're doing this in public, I'll attempt to be a little more specific. I'm dealing with version three (the second version here) because that's your latest update, right? Okay *cracks knuckles*
The title - I'm not so great at titles myself, and obviously can't judge how this sounds in German, but I like it - it makes sense but is suitably stylised for a highly stylised fic. The fact that it's an oblique reference to something probably improves it :) Though again that's difficult to judge without being able to understand the source of the "in-joke".
The format - I'm a fan of this, the italicised sentences break the poem sections nicely and provide the run-on-headlong-reality-tragedy feeling in contrast to the stark brevity of the poetry.
Specifically - the Ruth section. You make good use of colons, semi-colons, dashes and commas to keep the sentence going but coherent. The end 'sentence' is just wonderful ("and there's no place to go, no place at all.") So I don't really have any critical notes on that.
The Maya section, again balances the length with the punctuation quite well. There's some wonderful assonance and fake-rhyme within the sentence in this section: "trips, runs, pushes through the cluster and reaches the centre just as someone says 'it's over'," - it's the cluster-centre-over link. Perhaps I'm just noticing because I like that sort of thing, but it creates lends a strong poetic feel to the sections that don't initially look like poetry from a word-arrangement perspective.
What I want to do is suggest you add more of these 'near-rhymes' and rhythmic tricks to the prose sections, but I hesitate because I'm aware that's a) not the easiest thing to do when you're working within constraints such as one sentence, b) what you have is very effective already; I'm wary of ruining it because I found a nice bonus-trick in the second paragraph. But it's something to perhaps consider if you like the idea.
The only thing I'd consider changing from the Maya paragraph is to remove the "surprised" at the end. I understand if you disagree and feel it's necessary to stay with Maya's feeling in a paragraph devoted to, well, Maya's feelings. I guess my arguement is it skirts close to being unnecessary and perhaps a tiny bit cliche? It's implicit from the start - the wonderful description "Sam was unsalvageable from the first," - that she's trying to move on. Perhaps to me the more poignant fact is that she unthinkingly identifies herself as his girlfriend when she finds him despite her very deliberate attempts to remove herself from that frame of mind. The contrast is there without that final word.
Moving on to the poetry.
In general, I think it works well. This is, however, where most of my notes lie. And critiquing poetry is bloody impossible because of the nature of the beast and because I think my personal poetic preference will show up even *more* here than my personal prose preference shows up when I give you feedback on your prose. I'll try to limit that.
I think your problem section is the second verse. I know it's supposed to be running and jumping - falling - crashing. But the falling section really just...repeats a lot of stuff from the first section.
Corollory to this is my major concern about the poem as a whole - too many "ands". I believe that the and-and-and and the reptetition of ideas is there to create a sense of the unstoppable, or inevitability, or exhaustion. To a certain extent it succeeds, but I think those feelings are extremely well invoked in the prose sections. And Sam's jump, frelled up as it is, is still a moment of perverse joy for him.
Re: In Three Parts! ZOMG! Part 1.
Date: 2007-04-21 07:58 am (UTC)Example of how it might read without that ands, the 'too lates' and another word:
his feet slapping on concrete, the last step,
the last,
pushing off with all his power,
only the great blue,
gravity,
it's all right,
no space for anything but joy in this sky,
too late,
(a relief),
for regrets,
a change of mind,
a relief,
to feel the air rush past,
to know this is it,
to know it's over, it's done, he's done what he could,
he's done his best,
and his mum will understand, she understands,
she will -
Bolded sections represent lines I think are especially good.
Personally I think that's a cleaner verse. Note - I also got rid of the "such" before the second "it's a relief". While it may appear hypocritical since I'm about to talk about the non-useful repetition in the next verse, I am actually a fan of purposeful repetition as long as it doesn't reach critical mass. And here I think a literal repetition of "(a relief)" minues the brackets (which I liked) is more effective.
Okay, the second verse.
Mostly I think, as well as getting rid of unnecessary words (see above) it feels like you were trying to stretch it out to reach the length of the first, without that being necessary.
Things I think dilute the message (and this is difficult because I understand you want Sam to come off as a self-centred waffling git, but you have to walk the line between that and keeping the reader engaged) - lines I think aren't necessary:
The second "falling", the "it's so good" - you express it so much more wonderfully with "nothing but joy in this sky", this is a pale comparison and isn't necessary. I like the idea of breaking up the traditional cliche of "going, going, gone," by making it "going, going, almost gone". But just stick with that break-up of the cliche. "going, going, gone, almost gone," doesn't give you anything extra except waffle-space and a more literal rendition of the cliche.
You have several reference to "too late," or "too late to do anything," - perhaps pick one and stick with it?
In this verse, I quite like the lines: "it's over already/it's over" it looks good on the page, and this is an example of me enjoying the repetition. The fact that there's only time to repeat part of it; things are reducing. It's good. I also very much like the end "there's nothing here for him, nothing, nobody," - it juxtaposes well with the upcoming Maya verse.
I don't dislike this verse, but I do think it's the most problematic part of the piece (and mostly in the first half). I'd rewrite it much briefer, without the ands with very brief deliberate pieces of repetition, but with an attempt not to repeat ideas already presented to the reader unless you have an interesting linguistic way to do it - i.e. the fact it's good to be jumping, or the fact it's too late. Concentrate more on the fact of the ground rushing up and how the sky's no longer there, perhaps? Ultimately, I think my best advice is dare to be short in this verse.
Re: In Three Parts! ZOMG! Part 1.
Date: 2007-04-21 08:00 am (UTC)The notes I do have are basically - you guessed it - machete out those connecting words.
(Though keep the "and" in "things burse, tear and break". It's good rhythmically, the "and" doesn't start or end the sentence, and, paradoxically, I think taking it out "things burst, tear, break" would risk it becoming a poetic cliche of all things - rhythmically speaking!)
Also, I'd love the sleight of hand in meaning - the double run-on sentence you'd get if you removed and "and" and did this:
"this is -
the last millisecond takes forever,
a glorious, golden eternity,"
This is the last millisecond. The last millisecond takes forever. Makes the break even more abrupt; you realise it a millisecond after the fact; the impact has already taken place.
That that's that. :p
That's my feedback. It really is very good - I'm just a minimalist poetry freak. I think your opinion of my opnion will rise or fall on that fact... ;)
I know that posting revised drafts is very different to getting full-on feedback in the wide-open, so (while I know you're cool with bluntness), feel free to delete or screen these comments :)
Loads to think about.
Date: 2007-04-21 10:11 pm (UTC)I think the biggest issue I have is the 'and's. I *know* it's not a strong word - that's why I already removed quite a few of them in the second draft. But I'm not sure how much of the 'flying sensation' is due to the fluid connection and the rapid aspiration of the 'and's. Basically, the 'and's represent the air rushing by, or something, in terms of rhythm/flow/sound...
A cleaner verse it may be, but does it still feel like someone falling six floors?
Need to think about this more.
Re: Loads to think about.
Date: 2007-04-21 10:26 pm (UTC)'And' is effectively invisible and while that can lead to a "run-away" feel, I think it's really undermined by the layout of the poem. You can't get the run-on feel because of the abruptness of the line breaks and the very short lines. The one 'and' I didn't mind so much was the one in the middle of a sentence. So perhaps if the 'and's are important, rearrange the lines so they aren't at the beginnings or ends of lines?
It is better with fewer, I guess I'm just a poet with a machete... ;)
As another thought for you: a poem's impact is also in its visual representation on the 'page'. At least it can be. A lot of short lines looks like a fall from six floors, the short lines pull you down the page quickly, even if it isn't onomatopaeic (...sp?).
Re: Loads to think about.
Date: 2007-04-21 10:27 pm (UTC)Guessed as much. *g*
Date: 2007-04-21 10:30 pm (UTC)Well, I said in my original post that this needs some time in the drawer, and I think it does. I'll try to finish polishing "68 Wives" before I'll get back to this, I think. Because Methos deserves *some* time, too. *g*
Re: Guessed as much. *g*
Date: 2007-04-22 08:38 am (UTC)And also, yes, finish 68 Wives, because I've thought it was postable since, basically, the first time I read it. IT DESERVES TO BE SHARED!