Letter to my English teacher and his response

So I sent off my short story last night. It turned into a monster of a project and I will not be posting it here (for reasons stated below). If anyone is interested I'll be happy to share the polished version at the end of the semester--just email me. Accomplishing months of work (at least the way I write)  in less than two weeks is both heady and frightening. I have no idea if what I sent him was any good or not. 


The title of the story is "Chroma" and it's about an elderly painter named Lily who has moved into a cottage near her daughter-in-law and son who run a resort. We never actually meet Lily herself, but get to know her through her daughter-in-law's eyes beginning the morning that Jenny knocks on the door of Lily's cottage to find her gone. The only clues to her whereabouts are in a box in her bedroom and the paintings she created in the two months before her disappearance. 


Though I've never apologized in so many words to Mr. Stokes for anything, he's a bright fellow and seems to recognize my terrible habit of doing so too often and has called me on it three times now. At forty-six I'm finally beginning to see why I do this--it's a hold over from a childhood with constantly angry, impossible to please parents. I don't think I realized it was that apparent--even in print. 


In any case, I thought you'd appreciate the exchange. 


Mr Stokes,

A disclaimer and and a warning and a few other notes.

1)  I find I need distance from a project in order to truly see its weaknesses and am accustomed to having months in which to put a story to rights. Until then I'm either in love with it or I hate it. I'm wavering on this one. Sometimes it's awful. Sometimes it's the best thing I've ever written. Today I think it is awful, but then I also have a sinus infection, a sick husband, and hate everything except my puppy and she's walking a fine line (I liked that pair of shoes too . . .) 

2) This sucker is windy--just over 10,000 wds. I swear I went into it with a plan, I just didn't expect it to take so many words to get to the end. I know this is going to make work shopping for your purposes difficult. If you need me to, I can attempt to select the strongest excerpt and offer that up instead. 

3) The ending isn't right yet. 

4) On a brighter note, I experimented with indirect characterization in this. I've used this technique before, but not to this degree. 

Okay. Sending it off now.  

Have a nice break.

Mary Paddock

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Re: Paddock's Short Story

Mary--


Stop apologizing! I haven't even read the thing yet :-)

I'm sure it will be fine. Have a good break!


Caleb Stokes