Five Minutes More

[canadian]

Appears in this week's issue of Bewildering Stories:

http://www.bewilderingstories.com/issue209/five_minutes.html

This piece has an interesting development backstory. It began life as the first act of a play. Turning it into a short story was quite an exercise!

And it's fairly creepy, if I do say so myself. 

[SharonBell]

Very creepy. Is she dead or not, one is left wondering. Well done!

[Geoff_N]

Mucho angst and gritty feelings in that one, Donna - excellent.

I think the poet in you leaked into it too. In particular I relished in the form of the story in places. Look how this section starts with a booming 13 word line, then each succeeding line incrementally reduces -

_________________

"What are you talking about? Drips, hums, money? What did you do today?"

Daniel looked at her strangely. "I came to clean up your house."

"You? Clean my house? What's wrong with yours?"

"Where's your car?"

"In the driveway."

"No. It's not."

_________________

You clearly had fun playing with this piece, Donna. It deserves to be in a better place than BWS - not that I dislike Don Webb, but but but...

Your writing goes from strength to powerful strength, Donna.

Croissants and Jam

Geoff

[SharonBell]

Ditto! Go for print, Ms G! 

[Ed]

Well done, Donna

[canadian]

Thanks, all.

Geoff, your comments are very astute. Because I originally wrote this as an act in a stage play, I was constantly conscious of how tension would be portrayed through the character's dialogue. Thus, the decreasing number of words in several of the speech passages.

Maybe it's a good thing that my early writing was rejected due to 'unrealistic dialogue'! Made me work really hard at improving it.

One of my objectives with my writing this year was to only submit to paying markets. Haven't done enough towards that end lately. Don Webb at Bewildering happens to live in Guelph, we've had some meals together with our respective partners and it's just been too easy to send stuff off to him.

I need to spend some serious time researching those paying markets. Make more of an effort to print out hard copy, mail & wait, I guess.

Web publication is a great place for emerging writers to begin. But there comes a time ... 

[SharonBell]

Yup, time to take a risk, Ms G! You can do it! 

[Robert M. Blevins]

I haven't been over to Bewildering much lately, but I did check your story. Very well written, but I  cannot agree with the other comments here. 

This story needs some type of resolution. I read it four times. I still did not understand the point of it. Without resolution of some type, even a hint of one, the purpose of the story is lost IMHO.