(firstoff, sorry i never said anything about the last draft. I got backlogged on a bunch of stuff, and it sort of slipped away... So i might comment on some things that were in the last one, too.)
I really, really wish that there was someone even half as brilliant as you in my Fiction Workshop. If i could read this kind of thing for class, I would have no trouble getting my homework done. You're brilliant, love.
I really like the bit about the milk, and drinking it straight from the carton. That Mordecai casts his eyes down in embarassment when Anna Maria drinks from the carton is brilliant, and that she considers doing it in front of her mother is a very nice connection.
I'm not sure that the title works so well as "Anna Maria"... It's more about Home or God than about her, and something to do with one of those concepts may fit better; something about Home in particular.
Couple purely typographical issues that my insanity forces me to comment on: when Anna is first thinking of Mordecai's concept of god, you say "He said that when he prayed it was to the same God. He said that God is always that same;" i think that it should be "that same God" and "God is always the same" instead? And... There was something else... But it was, like, a letter left off of something, or something.
The bit about bad parts of her life coming at the ends of threes may work better if there are little foreshadowings to it earlier in the story, maybe? I'm not sure how you could do it, but i think it would be really nice if you made it that Mordecai kidnapped her two or four years after the last bad part began, as a little symbolism of it not being a bad part.
I still think her thoughts about his smile should come in the vicinity of someone smiling at her, rather than after the description of the river; it doesn't really fit the pattern of "event-memory" that the rest of the story has.
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Date: 2007-02-23 12:52 am (UTC)I really, really wish that there was someone even half as brilliant as you in my Fiction Workshop. If i could read this kind of thing for class, I would have no trouble getting my homework done. You're brilliant, love.
I really like the bit about the milk, and drinking it straight from the carton. That Mordecai casts his eyes down in embarassment when Anna Maria drinks from the carton is brilliant, and that she considers doing it in front of her mother is a very nice connection.
I'm not sure that the title works so well as "Anna Maria"... It's more about Home or God than about her, and something to do with one of those concepts may fit better; something about Home in particular.
Couple purely typographical issues that my insanity forces me to comment on: when Anna is first thinking of Mordecai's concept of god, you say "He said that when he prayed it was to the same God. He said that God is always that same;" i think that it should be "that same God" and "God is always the same" instead? And... There was something else... But it was, like, a letter left off of something, or something.
The bit about bad parts of her life coming at the ends of threes may work better if there are little foreshadowings to it earlier in the story, maybe? I'm not sure how you could do it, but i think it would be really nice if you made it that Mordecai kidnapped her two or four years after the last bad part began, as a little symbolism of it not being a bad part.
I still think her thoughts about his smile should come in the vicinity of someone smiling at her, rather than after the description of the river; it doesn't really fit the pattern of "event-memory" that the rest of the story has.
It's beautiful overall.