Flipping Pancakes

Ebony,

Great first story! The comparison of the making of pancakes to living your life on your own terms was genius. I also like how you wrapped everything up into a nice complete package, making your point and then tying it back to the pancake story from the beginning.

I would have liked to see some varied paragraph structure to make the story more readable (smaller chunks of text). What you have here is a bit dense.

Again, great work!

Ebony,

I loved every word. I could see your mother making pancakes, and your grandmother doing it her way. I could see your granny’s cigarette and taste her ambition, and see that ambition feeding every cell in your body.

As Angie’s said, the hinge of the story–you doing it your way just as you live your life your way–was brilliant. No other word will do.

Your description was perfect. The pictures you painted were clear and evocative. All in all, it was a delight to read.

I have only one suggestion. You might try reading the story out loud to see how many unnecessary words you can eliminate. A little text tightening might serve you well.

I enjoyed this story thoroughly. Cant wait to read another.

Judith

when weekends are young and promising.

Maybe verb tense shift here?

Granny had a certain rhythm in the kitchen, a swag that could only have been passed down from a generation of women who smoked their potent cigarettes and sassed their husbands and nursed their babies and seasoned their family’s meals with bittersweet tears.

It’s a little bit of a run-on, but I can practically see Granny just in this description.

She used an old wooden spoon that probably knew more family secrets than she did.

Ha! This is GREAT.

with a light, buttery crisp around the edges.

There’s a lot of mention of butter. I’m not complaining (mmmmm, butter!), just pointing it out. I’m coming over for pancakes, by the way.

a delicious recipe from allrecipes.com

If you intend to do anything serious with this, you may want to consider generalizing to “the Internet”. It’s my personal preference to avoid brand names to keep from dating a story… you’re probably safe with Bisquick and Krusteaz, though.

Truly, it is a privilege to be my own pancake self.

Fun last line.

Thanks for sharing, Ebony. I enjoyed this far more than I thought I would, given it’s a story about pancakes. I mean, I lovelovelove pancakes, but don’t often choose to read about them. 🙂

It was nicely done and I really feel like I’m in the kitchen with you and your matriarchs. And, seriously, coming over for breakfast…

I love the style of your narrative, Ebony, and the way you contrast your mother’s style with your grandmother’s. I noticed the shift in tense in the first paragraph, too and some places where word economy could be employed, but we were instructed to post what is essentially our second draft and if you can knock something out of this quality in only the second draft, I can’t wait to see what you produce given the time to properly see the a manuscript through.

Elise

Dear Ebony,

I absolutely love the feeling, tone, and subject of this piece: there is love in every paragraph. Love for food, love for your mother, love for your grandmother, love for their ways and their lifestyles. And tradition is clearly so important to you, as is finding your own way. Your respect for the two women in your family is apparent and touching. What a beautiful piece.

I have suggestions. There’s so much quiet power in what you are conveying, I felt I wanted to remove anything that watered down the quiet power of this piece.

Would you consider “fearless” rather than “fearlessness” in this sentence: “They tasted like fearlessness, bold, and robust.” In my opinion, “fearless” is stronger and makes the sentence smoother.

The sentence “I found a delicious receip from…” is a bit confusing chronoligically. You wouldn’t have known it was delicious until you tried it, and the way you’ve used it here indicates a specific chronological order of events. I’d nix the word “delicious” and maybe use a word describing what attracted you to the recipe at that time (before you’d tried it). Or just nix it altogether (because you don’t really need that kind of detail there, IMO.)

You wrote “Although I leave most of the lumps, I feel like I cradle the bowl her with her tenderness” I think it would be a more powerful sentence if you leave out “I feel like.” Perhaps find a beautiful way to state that you DO cradle that bowl with her tenderness – because I’m sure you do! Same with “I definitely feel like I have command.” That sounds kinda weak, and I can tell the author of this piece is not weak, and that she probably does have somewhat of a command. If you don’t have the command yet, you could find a way to say you’re gaining that command.

I hope these make sense.

This is such a tender, personal piece – I love this intimate peek into your life adn kitchen. Thank you!

Ebony, I adored this piece. The idea that pancakes taste like the person who makes them is wonderful. It reminds me of Like Water for Chocolate and a few other novels I’ve read. I also love the way you describe your journey to finding your own way of being through finding your own method of making pancakes.
Your voice is so strong! I agree that you could tighten this up a little bit, but it’s a wonderful first draft. Instead of changing fearlessness to fearless, I’d suggest changing bold to boldness and robust to strength, so that the words parallel each other. Or else take out “like” and say “They tasted fearless, bold and robust.”
A little picky thing is that I believe ‘mommy,’ and ‘granny’ should be capitalized when they are used as names.

I also forgot to say that I love your imaging, and the very idea that you can taste love, fearlessness, and so on in something someone has cooked.

Ebony,

Lovely and profound. I think a testament to your skill is that as soon as I started reading about your Granny’s pancakes, I knew that I would prefer hers to your mother’s as well. The paragraphs about your mother and about your grandmother, both exemplified the style of the women themselves. Excellent.

I loved the fact that the whole piece is a metaphor for finding yourself, your own dharma, in a vernacular that reflects who you are and where you’re from.

Minor criticism: I think if you started the piece with a couple of sentences that just hinted at the theme, “finding your true self,” not hit the head but subtle, it would heighten the reader’s expectation and pleasure. Now when I began, sorry to say, I felt oh another cutesy memori about someone who loves her mom’s pancakes, and obviously is so much more. Michael

Ebony, what a wonderful story. It is so easy to get trapped into repetitiveness of certain statements. I have a lot of trouble with I, She, He said, says, or other substitutions that one always thinks belong at the end of a quote.
If you can continue to put your passion into your writing as you have done here, I am sure you will create many wonderful stories for us to enjoy.

I liked how vividly you described the cooking styles of your mother and grandmother. I could definitely see both women in their kitchens and the contents of their mixing bowls. And from the way you described your granny’s pancakes, I can see why you preferred hers (and it made me want to have a plate myself). I also liked how you compared making pancakes to finding yourself. I’ve seen a lot of metaphors used for this theme, but I can’t say any of them involved pancakes.

The first sentence threw me off a bit. It started off with a memory, then there was a shift in tenses which I had to read twice before continuing. Otherwise, I read the entire thing without stopping. This was a lovely piece. Thank you for sharing this.

Ebony,

I too enjoyed reading about the making of the pancakes, and the different styles of the matriarchs. There’s some lovely mouth-watering buttery descriptions.

I got lost temporarily, when you mentioned about flipping flapjacks. Then I realised that must have been a typo, LOL!

If anything, I’d have loved to have seen more interaction/conflict/dialogue between the three characters. For instance, perhaps you could have all three preparing to enter a pancake competition, each believing there own style is the best, and most likely to win!

Thanks so much for sharing!

Katie 🙂