Wow, it’s gorgeous! You have done a stunning job. Congratulations, and good luck as you move into fiction.

This is very good, Judith. Even I, as someone who has only been on a horse a few times, followed all of the horsey stuff. Your writing is clear and easy to follow, with just enough description to set the scene and carry the story along. I felt like I was right there on the first day at horse camp.

I didn’t mind too much that the first half of this concentrated on the economics and the second half on her frustration at camp. To me they seemed related.

I like that you’re fleshing this out, but I tend to enjoy flash fiction, which always leaves a lot to the reader’s imagination, so I’m fine with this as it stands (other than Margie’s comment about the repeated information). I do like the idea of this being something she looks back on as an adult as a seminal moment. Great job.

This is awesome. Daniel goes to camp! 🙂 I can’t wait to hear what happens next. I hope he’s taking his pencil.

Your nine-year-old voice is so perfect, at least to my ears. This is fun and playful, as always. There are so many great lines here, about seaweed and so on, that I couldn’t name them all. It reads as if you wrote it easily. Any kid would relate to and love this story.

Perhaps Daniel capitulates a little too fast once he realizes that Annie is going to camp. Maybe his mother can make one more comment, such as promising to take him up on the meatloaf, serving him brussel sprouts, making him clean the kitchen/bathroom (instead of him dreaming that up), or his sister’s horrid boyfriend having to stay with them for a week, that breaks his resistance?

Hi Michael, I’m so glad to meet you. I love what you’ve written about yourself, and the joy writing gives you.

I look forward to reading your fiction. Good luck with platform building and selling more copies. From what I’ve heard, the train takes off slowly for new authors, but the momentum builds and builds if your work is good.

I’m taking this course because I’m getting closer to publication and I would like to build a platform so that I can sell more than a handful of copies. The platform part of this course has only partly stuck with me, despite taking it more than once.

While I feel like I have my cartel, I’m with Jen: it could be bigger.

I would like to have a writing career, even if it isn’t full time, and I would like to touch people’s lives through rich and interesting stories. Mostly, though, I want to do soul-satisfying work, and that’s what writing is for me.

Interesting story, Michael, capturing a moment in the saga of growing up. I wanted to read it, because I’ve been enjoying your comments on various pages.

I love the paragraph when he tells his parents, and it’s almost as if they don’t hear him. Typical parent reaction to a teen who often goes driving with his friends along the coast.

There are other moments which really caught me – the description of Joy as twiggy flat and the next paragraph with the Buick looking like a landing craft.

You expressed well how young they are, gossiping and immaturely annoying each other. There’s also a lot of drama when the narrator wants to get out of the car and plans it so he’ll fall down the cliff.

Still, I remained a little puzzled about what went on here. Perhaps the ambiguity is deliberate. I’m not sure if the narrator is upset because he feels they did something wrong or because he’s gay and only had sex to prove himself to Michael, on whom he appears to have a crush (or does he?), or because he couldn’t manage the sex part with Joy (this is really not even hinted at if that’s what happened). He shrinks away from Joy because? I could come up with many reasons. Perhaps that’s what you want, but I’m not sure it works. I find it weird that he mentally calls Joy ‘Miss Virgin Puss’ when she’s willing to have sex with both of them and to drive them to the beach to do it.

Also, the cry made me think that Michael had hurt her. The way she lay on the beach, I thought she might be dead. It wasn’t until the last line that I realized the narrator wasn’t upset because they’d killed/raped her, since she was obviously alive. Before that, I didn’t know if they’d left her on the beach and taken her car or not.

One inconsistency – at the start Davy is sitting between Michael and Joy and then after the argument he’s shrinking against the door.

Loved the last line.

• This reply was modified 10 years, 11 months ago by  Ann Stanley.

• This reply was modified 10 years, 11 months ago by  Ann Stanley.

I don’t know if we are allowed to present a new version, Lee, but why not? I would love to see what you do with it. Again, I am impressed that you have the courage to present such a deeply personal, horrifying experience.

Brenda, you go to the forum where you want to write something and simply scroll to the bottom of the page to the box, type and submit. For example, click on Forum->Introductions and scroll down. It should say create a new topic. THere you can tell us about yourself.

Lee, love your phrase: In writing we soar, in sharing we shake.

Yes, Jen! I’m with you!