Luna Williams
As my head tilts back with the sound of my scream echoing in the distance, my eyes open…I see something above me. “My sweet girl grab my hand, come here” I reach out my hand.
Surrounded by dark, foggy clouds with my Mum. “Why are you up here Mum” She leads me in silence, I can’t see anything but pitch black. The weight of her hand slowly gets lighter and lighter.
My heart jumping out of my chest as I sink into my bed. “Mum!!!!” I scream at the top of my lungs, no answer. I switch on the lights in distress and confusion… I’m at home. ‘I never left now did I’
***
I am on a bus and there’s forty minutes left until I’m at my Mums house. I am scrolling through her facebook giggling. My legs are shaking, I can feel the pulse of my heart in my chest and my hands are getting clammy. I’m listening to throw back songs and the only thing on my mind is my Mum.
The card my Mum gave me before she put me up for adoption is sitting in my back pocket. It’s been folded up so small with small rips on the edges, its so fragile and special to me. The writing is getting so faint but I am reading it over and over ‘Luna Williams, you were born to be wild and to do things that your heart desires. Go far and do this world proud. I love you.’
I am outside her house, the dark old wood slabs with white paint chipping off of it. The beach house looking over the ocean with a big wrap around porch and long skinny warf. The American flag off the end of the warf with the slight wind making it ripple. The sound of the ice cream trucks in the background is making me feel like a little girl again. I see someone in the kitchen, long blonde wavy hair; this is my Mum.
The grass is so perfect it clearly has been watered a lot! The wooden two seated hanging benches on each side of the front door. The mailbox has been decorated with shells from the beach, each shell painted ever so carefully with pastel coloured paints with swirls and different patterns. It’s a shame I didn’t get my Mums artistic genes.
The stepping stones up to her front door are so carefully placed, big solid dark rocks with little pearly pebbles around the outside. The pot plants hanging around the front door is creating such a homely atmosphere for me. I’m about to knock on the door.
“Hi there” my Mum said with confusion, her eyes crinkling, smile slowly turning awkwardly upside down. I quietly scuffed myself away from her front door. My mind is on fire ‘I’m so stupid why would she remember me’ ‘What a waste of time’. “Wait Luna is that you?” I dropped everything and ran back to her.
Her skin – just like mine, freckled and her style so rigid and careless. I can just see the top of her blonde wavy hair. Sniffing in it’s a memory that has stuck with me, her smell she’s carried through with her after all these years, it hasn’t changed.
We were sitting at the end of the warf looking out at that beautiful view of the sunset slowly dropping. These words will never leave my brain, “Luna sweetheart, you are not my daughter. I did not give birth to you, I adopted you and I didn’t feel a connection with you so I thought you’d be better off with a different family. Luna I’m sorry but your actual birth Mother never left her name or any contact details with the foster home I got you from.”
Walking away from her house, I take one more look around. The thunderstorm in behind the clouds as rain starts drizzling down.
This is a good story arc – and you’ve thought through the set up of the story and then the final reveal.
The work now is on three fronts:
1) Show don’t tell. You’ve made a start on developing sensory description to match the key moments, for example when you describe the house in Jersey Shore, but this needs to be extended significantly. For this to work best, the details you choose to describe must help to build an atmosphere and even anticipation into the story. As a simple (and corny) example, there might be a thunderstorm on the horizon – I’m sure you can work on something better than this.
2) The storyline you’ve developed is enough for a whole novel, so it’s now going to be a matter of deciding what to leave out. I suggest you consider focussing only on the moment of letting go of her mum’s hand at the kindergarten and the day of meeting who you think is your birth mum.. the rest can be left for the reader to work out.
3) Now the piece is developing, consider a ‘magical realism’ element. This could be a character or an object which is treated as if it’s normal, but that couldn’t possibly be there. You’re moving in that direction by naming your character Luna. So, the element could be something about moons or tides. We can talk about this more in person if you like.
To get where you need to with this, it would be a good idea to read some fiction in this area, magical realism short stories would be a great start. I suggest, since you’re working in the library, that you ask Florence for these.
Let me know if you need further advice.
CW
Hi Bridget,
I’ve spoken with my colleagues about the feedback we should be giving you to support the last phase of the writing of this piece, and here’s the summary of this. I am happy to talk these items through to expand on them so that you can use your last periods to address each of the areas in turn.
there are writing conventions errors
address clumsy repetitive word choices
address repetitive simple sentence starters
the piece is highly cliched towards the end
overall it’s confusing to me. There’s a real disconnect between sentences and paragraphs. The piece needs to work towards greater coherence. The thought of ‘making sure each sentence gives rise to the next’ applies to her work. Addressing this should create fluidity and see it feeling like one piece