#narrative

I wrote this in 2011 while I was in college. This was my first narrative in my English 101 class. Mr. Oliver, my professor emailed me that night, as he was grading papers and told me about his wife. His wife drown in their swimming pool. I remember that connection my professor had that night and everyday after. I took all his courses my degree would allow, and even had him mind whenever I named my son. This story is rough for me to read, but its solely fiction. 

As I swung my feet, one after the other on the old, wooden bridge, I thought of the events that had occurred just a few long minutes before. I took another drag of my cigarette and flicked the ashes into the shallow creek under the bridge. As I finished the phone call to the police, calling for help, images of my family raced through my head like race cars on the last lap. I guess I was still in shock but it confused me that I was so calm. I felt so numb and cold. I could smell the rain coming in the air as I shivered. I took a quick glance at the trees, and saw the leaves had turned downward. They were ready for the water. I wish I had been ready for my parents to leave me helpless and alone.

I thought to myself, “I hate knowing that the last thing I said was something mean.”

The smell of fuel and smoke lingered on my clothes and hair. I ran my fingers through my hair to the top of my head and felt the wetness of the wound. Looking at my hand, I saw the blood and felt dizzy.

“It didn’t matter anyways,” I said to myself, shaking it out of my head. “Mom and Dad are gone. Nothing I can do now.”

I stopped sobbing and accepted the few moments that had just passed by.

Confused and in a daze on how I was sitting down on the bridge. How did I get here? I stood up with blood dripping off my hand from the cut deep in my hand. The sketchy  moments  flashed in my head. One moment after another; I saw myself struggling to get out from the backseat. I turned around and was amazed at the sight. I screamed and stumbled backwards in response. All at once, I had held my head in pain, with both of my hands squeezing as hard as I could and I closed my eyes wishing it would all be a dream. Once I came back from the flashback, I turned my head to look at the scene. It still looked terrible. I did not want to believe the sight of it. My parents’ car was flipped over and looked like a crumbled mess. The passenger door dented into my mother’s body and her head was against my father’s shoulder. They looked like a mess but peaceful.

I wondered to myself, “Why didn’t I try to help them? Was I selfish? It wasn’t like me to give up.”

I could hear the sirens coming around the bend. My heart was fluttering as I tried to get up from the bridge using the edge of the railing as a balance beam. As the ambulance drove past the scene and parked near me, I got scared. I saw the men and women’s heads turn in horror towards my parents’ car. They were oblivious to the other car, which lay on its’ driver’s side, just a few feet away.

All at once the memory of the crash hit my head again, which made me grab my temple  and close my eyes in pain. I yelped at the site of it and one of the men ran to my rescue, slamming the truck door in a hurry. I protested and fell to the ground pushing him away from me. I sobbed and did not care that it was not going to help my parents. I just knew in the back of my head that my parents were gone.

The men and women worked quickly as they pulled out the equipment from the ambulance. Supplies were flying and the help was frantic. I had to listen to the numerous questions the man I had pushed away was asking me. Somewhere in the midst of watching everyone help my parents, he had told me his name was Henry. I guess I had told him my name, since he was saying it after every question. I was sidetracked and started to get up and walk to my parents’ car.

Henry put his hand out, grabbing my shoulder saying, “You do not want to go over there, Eleni. It is not safe.”

I turned my head towards Henry, looked in his eyes. The expression on his face turned from concerned to true sadness and sympathy.

I heard men cheer for joy and it made me quickly turn my head, to realize that my father was pulled out of the car, and I watched his chest heaving for breath. My heart started to race and I realized my body was running towards him. I had no idea what came over me. A firefighter stopped me, mid-stride and held me in place. He told me the same thing that Henry did, without using my name. I shot him the meanest look and struggled to get out of his hold.

“Is he going to be okay?!” I screamed. “Daddy, please don’t leave me!”

Knowing that I wasn’t going anywhere, I kept screaming like a broken record player. He was put on a stretcher carefully. My eyes grew concerned as they followed my father being pushed to the ambulance on the stretcher. He managed to open his eyes and smile at me. He wanted to let me know that he was okay.  He groaned in pain and held his ribcage as they placed him in the van.

“I want to go with him!” I screamed to the firefighter. Tears started to roll down my face.

“He is going to be fine,” the firefighter managed to say without choking up, still grasping me into his chest.

“What about my mom?” I asked, turning towards my parents demolished car. He nodded towards the car.

While I had been watching my father drive away with the meds, the passenger door was sawed off and placed a few feet away from the car. My mother was carried carefully to a stretcher with a neck brace secured on her neck. I started to feel my head pound again and tried to lift up my hand to check the wound, but the firefighter’s grasp was too tight. My neck gave out and my head started to feel like it was falling off. I grew tired and felt out of breath. My body went limp and I passed out.

My eyes blinked fast and my head was still pounding. Lights kept going on and off, as I felt like I was gliding. I was so lifeless and my face wrinkled in confusion. I moved my head from side to side and my heart began to race very fast. I knew where I was, once I saw the white lab coats. I opened my month to scream, but all I could hear was a moan of discomfort.  The gliding feeling finally stopped and I started to feel like I was going to throw up. A nurse heard me try to talk as she was putting something in my skin. I felt a sharp pain.

“Oh honey, don’t try to speak. You have a tube down your throat to help you breath. You are going to be fine. Don’t get scared.” She brushed back my hair to calm me down.

I nodded and felt sleepy again. My eyes grew heavy and I felt warmth around me. The nurse had put a fresh blanket around me.

I smelled perfume in the air whenever I opened my eyes again. I yawned and noticed the tube was out. My mouth felt very dry and fuzzy. I looked around the room and pinched myself to make sure it wasn’t a dream. The room was very rich in color, dark blues on the wall and matching chairs in the very corner. My eyes grew big as I saw my father sleeping in one of the chairs. I pushed myself into a sitting position quietly and he started to wake up. I smiled as he looked up and moved into a more comfortable position. He cleared his throat, bent over picking his cup of water from the ground and ached in pain, grabbing his rib cage. When he looked back up, he tried to hide the pain but I saw it in his eyes. He took a drink of the water and coughed gently. I grew concerned as he coughed again.

“It’s okay, sweetie,” he reassured me. “Everything is okay.”

“Are you just saying that because you need to hear it too?” My voice cracked in the middle of asking him.

I could tell in his face that he knew I was right. I nodded in triumph.

I looked around the room for a button to push for a nurse. I had never been in a hospital before, so I was just going by what I saw in television shows and movies.

“The red button,” my dad said, knowing what I was looking for.

I looked up at him and he had a weak smile on his face.

I pressed the button and sat waiting in silence. I knew that my dad was not going to answer any of my questions. I started to wiggle my feet in anticipation, waiting for her to respond to my call. The room window was open slightly and I felt the cool nighttime air on my hot flesh. The sweat rolling off my face and onto the bed was making me feel at ease and calm.

I heard the sliding glass door open and shut slowly a few moments later, and the nurse came up to my bed smiling.

“Are you feeling okay, Eleni?” She mispronounced my name.

I rolled my eyes and I shook my head in disgust. My dad chuckled, knowing how I was about my name.

“Where is my mother? Why is my dad holding his rib cage in pain? Why am I in a hospital? When am I getting out?” All my questions just shot out like a machine gun. They startled the nurse. My throat still hurt from the tube. I had no idea why I needed a tube either.

“You are in the hospital because you were in a car accident, Eleni.” She mispronounced my name again.

“Eleni. It is E-lan-e.” I corrected her rudely. “Where is my mother?”

“I think you need some more sleep, sweetheart.” My dad tried to rise up from the chair, struggling with the pain.

“No. Where is she?” I screamed and threw the covers back, trying to get out of the bed.

My dad shook his head and started to choke up in sadness. I wrinkled my face in confusion again. It hit me hard as I jumped to the conclusion.

“She isn’t with us anymore,” he was able to make into words. “I’m sorry. It is my entire fault.”

The nurse looked at my dad and she got the hint to leave.

I started to shake my head, not believing him.

“Wait!” I screamed and the nurse turned around. “Are you serious?”

I paused, waiting for her response. She nodded and left wiping a tear.

I stared off into space, trying to remember everything. Out of habit, I noticed that I bit into my nails and the skin around it to ease the tears. It didn’t help at all. I just would bite harder as the tears rolled down my face faster.

“I can’t remember anything, Dad. There is just…” I paused, “black.” I forced my eyes closed.

“It’s okay, sweetie. She isn’t suffering anymore.” At that time, he had managed to sit down next to me on the bed.  We sat there in silence for minutes. The minutes turned into hours and the hours turned into us watching the sunrise in the window. My dad grabbed my hand and patted it. I was pulled out of my trance of shock and looked into his eyes. He wasn’t crying anymore. I pulled my face away from his hand as he tried to wipe the tears away from my red and puffy cheeks. I looked into his eyes.

“What are you thinking about?” He looked confused and hurt.

“I was trying to remember my last words to mom.”

He looked away from me, towards the sunset. His eyes were glossy and deep.

“You don’t need to remember the bad moments, Eleni. Remember her like a mother and I will remember her as a great wife. She was the thing that kept us sane in life. She was the love in our hearts. She will always be with us.”

“I can’t help but to blame myself,” I whispered.

He quickly turned his head towards mine and shook his head in disappointment.

“Eleni, nothing that happened that day was your fault.”

Tears continued to roll down my face, as I listened to my father pour his wisdom out.

“We can make it through this.” He paused. “I know we can do anything.”

I managed to crack a tiny smile and just nod. Even though I didn’t believe at the time, I wanted him to at least get something positive out of it. At least we had each other even though my mother left us behind.

We left the hospital a few hours later and walked to the nearest bus station. We were given scrubs at the hospital since our clothes were ruined from the wreck. I didn’t care that we might have looked like outcasts. Once Dad bought the tickets, we walked out of the station, and onto the right bus. I chose a window seat and my father occupied the one next to me.

The bus doors clothed as the last few passengers took their seats. My heart started to skip beats in excitement.

“Is this wrong?” I thought to myself.

“What’s the matter?” My dad must have known that I was confused.

“Nothing is wrong.”  I winced in pain for a moment when I placed my head on his shoulder. “I am just glad we are together.”

The whole bus started to move forward and it startled a bunch of passengers. I looked out the window and was puzzled.

“Where are we heading, Dad?”

“Away.”

I never knew that one word could mean so much to me. But the way my father said it made me look up at him and I knew it was true. He was looking out the window. It seemed like he was looking past the glass, past the bus station building and past the busy people. It seemed like he was letting all his sadness and loneliness fly out of his body.

The bus turned out of the parking lot and we never looked back. There was no point to look back.

lyhoradka:

hi kings let’s find out which of my fave literary devices you are

absolutelynotclassicusernam-blog:

sarah-sandwich:

polizwrites:

athingofvikings:

“But let me give you the dark side of writing groups. One really dark side of writing groups is, particularly newer writers, don’t know how to workshop.

"And one of the things they’ll try to do is they’ll try to make your story into the story they would write, instead of a better version of the story you want to write.

"And that is the single worst thing that can happen in feedback, is someone who is not appreciating the story you want to make, and they want to turn it into something else.

"New workshoppers are really bad at doing this. In other words, they’re really good at doing a bad thing, and they’re doing it from the goodness of their heart. They want you to be a better writer. They want to help you. The only way they know is to tell you how they would do it, which can be completely wrong for your story.”

—Brandon Sanderson, Lecture #1 Introduction, Writing Science Fiction And Fantasy

And this is why many writers (including me) don’t ask for concrit on their published stories - they’ve told the story they want to tell. 

If that’s not the story you want to read,  you are welcome to write your own version.

He goes on to say that to give good feedback, tell them how the writing made you feel. Don’t say, “instead of that you should do this.” Tell them, “this part confused me.” Or, “my attention drifted during this scene.” Your job isn’t to tell them howto fix it or even that it needs fixed. Your job is let them know what impact their story had on you, the reader. Then they can determine if it’s accomplishing what they want it to and if not, they know which parts need attention.

It isn’t just young writers who do this! Until last fall, this is what I did because this is what my teachers taught me to do. And I hated writing workshops. I kept going to them because I needed to learn how to be a better writer, but…did I actually learn? Mostly what happened was that my work got picked apart and I became depressed and left the story behind because I no longer thought it was any good. My teachers were operating with the best intentions in the world too, but with their help, I ended up with the world’s worst case of writer’s block and a chronic lack of belief in myself.

Then, last fall, my very last semester of college, I took a class with a professor who told us that we were not going to use the classic workshop format. Instead of writing down everything that we thought our classmates should do, we were assigned to ask them questions. And as writers, we were assigned not to sit passively while feedback was fired at us, but to ask questions, to explain what we had been going for and ask if it worked, and if not to brainstorm together how we might make it work.

It was miraculous. Instead of shutting my mind down, this workshop process blew it wide open. Instead of going home after class dispirited, never wanting to touch my story again, I went home inspired, with a hundred new ideas.

So I am a big advocate for this method–and I think it is important to underscore that it isn’t just students who need to be taught it. Writing teachers need to learn it too.