Sunday Snippets Critique Blog Hop #5

This week I’m continuing with Jennifer M Eaton’s Sunday Snippets Critique Blog Hop in which writers post 250 words of their current Work in Progress and then hop around and critique everyone else’s snippets. To join,  click here to sign up and add your name and web site address to the list.

Thanks again to everyone who took the time two weeks ago to offer a critique of my work (I missed last week).

This week’s snippet is from a different scene than my last few posts. Those featured the opening 1,000 words of my novel, Rani’s Right., in parts One, Two, Three and Four. In this scene she describes the moments before the plane crash.

You often hear the cliché “I saw my life flash before my eyes!” when someone’s faced with the very real possibility of death. The instant I realised I was within arm’s length of that dark, silent sickle bearer, that it was close enough to touch me without shifting it’s weight, that my entire life was in its total and complete control, time slowed to a crawl and my awareness became amazingly acute. I could see the flickering of the fluorescent lights, I could almost count the flashes and not fall behind. I saw the people around me moving painfully slow in their panic. I could hear every word people were screaming and feel the pain in their voices.

I smell the fear, the sweat, the air-conditioning, the ozone, the fuel, the smoke, the heat, the whining of the engines. I feel the aircraft shaking, the wings vibrate. I think of the people I knew, the people I love, the people who aren’t with me, couldn’t be with me, will never be with me again. I think of all the things I wanted to say to them but kept putting off. I think of the things I’ve done that I’ll never do again. The things I want to do but never got round to. I think of the loves, the hates, the triumphs, the losses, regrets, pains, achievements… For the last time… ever…

 Please have a look at and, if possible, critique the work of these authors, while you’re here. look for this logo. It will take you to their latest critique post:

http://mermaidssinging.wordpress.com/

http://caitlinsternwrites.wordpress.com/

http://ileandrayoung.com

http://jennykellerford.wordpress.com

http://jennifermeaton.com/

https://richardleonard.wordpress.com

http://jordannaeast.com

http://itsjennythewren.wordpress.com/

http://wehrismypen.wordpress.com

http://jlroeder.wordpress.com

http://letscutthecrap.wordpress.com/

http://ashortaday.wordpress.com

 

Sunday Snippets Critique Blog Hop #4

This week I’m continuing with Jennifer M Eaton’s Sunday Snippets Critique Blog Hop in which writers post 250 words of their current Work in Progress and then hop around and critique everyone else’s snippets. To join,  click here to sign up and add your name and web site address to the list.

Thanks again to everyone who took the time last week to offer a critique of my work.

This week’s snippet follows a little way after the 250 words featured last week from my novel Rani’s Right. I’ve skipped over a paragraph that will likely be cut. Again, in keeping with my laziness, I haven’t rewritten anything since last week so it’s still the same old draft. Our narrator is still trying to sort out what she actually wants to write but is starting to get her act together.

I should explain where we are rather than ramble all about the place. I’m writing this on August 21^st 2004. Two months to the day. I’m back in Melbourne, Alfred Hospital burns unit. I was sent back not long after Rani’s death. I didn’t even get to say goodbye properly. Attend her funeral, I mean. Her body was shipped back to Singapore with all the other cargo. How degrading. I don’t even know if she had a funeral. I haven’t heard a thing from her family. Actually, Rani said on the plane during our brief conversation that her brother went away somewhere about four years ago and she hasn’t heard from him since. Her father was killed about six months before that in a work accident or something. Her mother is now widowed and without either of her children, poor woman. I’d never met her but felt that I knew her like my own mother from everything Rani told me during that year she was staying in Omeo. I desperately wanted to give her a hug and tell her that her daughter is a hero and that she didn’t die in vain. One day, I might see my wish granted. Maybe.

It’s a tad shorter than 250 but it ends at a natural break so I didn’t try to pad it out.

Please have a look at and, if possible, critique the work of these authors, while you’re here. look for this logo. It will take you to their latest critique post:

http://mermaidssinging.wordpress.com/

http://caitlinsternwrites.wordpress.com/

http://ileandrayoung.com

http://wyrmflight.wordpress.com/

http://www.mandyevebarnett.com

http://womanbitesdog.wordpress.com/

http://jennykellerford.wordpress.com

http://jennifermeaton.com/

https://richardleonard.wordpress.com

http://jordannaeast.com

http://letscutthecrap.wordpress.com

http://threepiecebikini.blogspot.com/

http://itsjennythewren.wordpress.com/

http://writerscrash.blogspot.co.uk/

http://wehrismypen.wordpress.com

http://wordsbreathedupon.wordpress.com/blog/

http://jlroeder.wordpress.com

 

Sunday Snippets Critique Blog Hop #3

Jennifer M Eaton has started a Sunday Snippets Critique Blog Hop in which writers post 250 words of their current Work in Progress and then hop around and critique everyone else’s snippets. To join,  click here to sign up and add your name and web site address to the list.

Thanks again to everyone who took the time last week to offer a critique of my work.

This week’s snippet follows immediately from the first 250 words featured last week from my novel Rani’s Right. It continues from the same paragraph. Again I haven’t rewritten anything since last week so it’s still the same old draft. This week’s snippet may actually explain some things or it may not.

Rani was my best friend (albeit a long lost one), she pulled me and my boyfriend from the wreck. Then she kept going back and grabbing people and helping them out of the inferno until she collapsed in a flaming heap. For two weeks from that day it looked like we were all recovering from an ordinary aircraft accident. Ordinary? Well, we all thought it was ordinary. Until Rani was shot.

I’ve just been staring at that last bit for 15 minutes now. I don’t think I’ve acknowledged that before. Directly, I mean, to anyone. Or myself. I haven’t said the words. Even in that first draft which is now sitting at the local rubbish dump.

Why am I writing this? Well, right at this minute it’s my therapy and I don’t care if it doesn’t make any sense. My mind spins faster than my hand can move so if I’m all over the place like a blowie round a cow pat, just bear with me. Long term, I don’t know. I guess I just want Rani to be remembered. She was my idol, my soul mate at a time when I felt strangled and isolated. I want to see justice done, too. I want there to be a record of her legacy. People need to know. I don’t even know who I’m writing this for. Me? My family? Rani’s family? I don’t know. No one in particular. At the moment it’s just therapy.

Please have a look at and, if possible, critique the work of these authors, while you’re here. look for this logo. It will take you to their latest critique post:

http://mermaidssinging.wordpress.com/

http://caitlinsternwrites.wordpress.com/

http://ileandrayoung.com

http://wyrmflight.wordpress.com/

http://www.mandyevebarnett.com

http://womanbitesdog.wordpress.com/

http://jennykellerford.wordpress.com

http://jennifermeaton.com/

https://richardleonard.wordpress.com

http://jordannaeast.com

http://letscutthecrap.wordpress.com

http://threepiecebikini.blogspot.com/

http://itsjennythewren.wordpress.com/

http://writerscrash.blogspot.co.uk/

http://wehrismypen.wordpress.com

http://wordsbreathedupon.wordpress.com/blog/

Sunday Snippets Critique Blog Hop #2

Jennifer M Eaton has started a Sunday Snippets Critique Blog Hop in which writers post 250 words of their current Work in Progress and then hop around and critique everyone else’s snippets. To join,  click here to sign up and add your name and web site address to the list.

A big thanks to everyone who took the time last week to offer a critique of my work. It was certainly a valuable exercise and I quickly realised how unqualified I am at doing this. I learned a lot just last week, both about the critiquing process and what needed fixing in my own work.

This week’s snippet follows immediately from the first 250 words featured last week from my novel Rani’s Right. It’s a young adult, contemporary novel. I haven’t rewritten anything since last week so I realise many of last weeks comments will still apply. I should have put the Chapter heading in last week as January 1. We continue from there.

Or was I rambling on about nothing in particular because I wanted to avoid the issue. I don’t know. I just know that I wasn’t ready, emotionally and physically, to write anything. It was too early. I was pushing myself too hard. I thought I could get through it by expressing how I felt. The frustration, anger and shock probably caught up with me then. Maybe I could have done it emotionally if I hadn’t tried to read what I’d written and found that it was worse than a doctor’s script. That drove it all home. It was the first proof I had that there were things I couldn’t do any more. Until then I was lying in a Manama hospital having treatment for burns on my arms and legs, naively thinking I’d be back to normal when I recovered after few days. Looking back it was quite hard to write with burnt hands wrapped in that special dressing they put you in. It’s funny; at the time ripping those pages out didn’t hurt at all. Amazing what anger can do. But they hurt like hell afterwards, when the adrenalin wore off.

January 2

 

I’ve never kept a diary before. Never felt the need. The life of this ordinary girl growing up in the quiet country town of Omeo isn’t so exciting that it justifies recording in a diary. That’s how I felt about my life anyway. Until now. It’s not that I want to say “Hey people, boring girl from the country miraculously survives plane crash”, or even “Crash survivor watches as rescuer shot in cold blood”.

Notes: Omeo is a real place in Eastern Victoria Australia, which I used fictitiously. You can look it up if you like. Manama is the capital of Bahrain in the Middle East.

Thanks for stopping by and taking the time to read my work and if you’re taking part in the Critique Blog Hop, I look forward to reading your constructive criticism. 🙂

Please have a look at and, if possible, critique the work of these authors, while you’re here. look for this logo. It will take you to their latest critique post:

http://mermaidssinging.wordpress.com/

http://caitlinsternwrites.wordpress.com/

http://ileandrayoung.com

http://wyrmflight.wordpress.com/

http://www.mandyevebarnett.com

http://womanbitesdog.wordpress.com/

http://jennykellerford.wordpress.com

http://jennifermeaton.com/

https://richardleonard.wordpress.com

http://jordannaeast.com

http://letscutthecrap.wordpress.com

http://wehrismypen.wordpress.com

http://writerscrash.blogspot.co.uk/

http://itsjennythewren.wordpress.com

Sunday Snippets Critique Blog Hop

Jennifer M Eaton has started a Sunday Snippets Critique Blog Hop in which writers post 250 words of their current Work in Progress and then hop around and critique everyone else’s snippets. To join,  click here to sign up and add your name and web site address to the list.