Dear Joy,

This is Joey C. and I am reviewing your short of "Invalid Item"  as part of my ‘Member to Member’ activity for Rising Stars. Joy, you have read enough of my reviews to know that my comments are always meant as constructive observation. I would never presume to correct or suggest anything is wrong. I also know you have seen my admonishment to our peers that they should stand up and cry foul when my swing sends the ball outside the big yellow pole, you know the one that marks left of sanity. Please do not let any of my ramblings, though, disguised in the form of review, take away from your continuing support of my education. I pray you will take my choosing something from your portfolio as my first M2M review, as a testament for the high regard I hold for your efforts on WdC.

I took a chance and decided to pull up your romantic efforts, hoping it might reveal some secret insight into your psyche, and because I have not reviewed any of that genre yet . I was not disappointed, there I found daring. You laid out not one, but three, aspects of what many consider societal taboos. Writing to these types of issues is something I thing we should all be required to do, so that we would be confronted face to face with our own personal demons. The obvious ease of which you talk of the life conflict for Josie and Kara is truly a testament to your courage.

When I first look at a static item, I try to indentify what type of item it is meant to be, is it poetry, limerick, a book, novelette, or a short story and if it is a short what kind of short is it? Is it a parable, a fable, flash fiction, is it a test characterization, or is it a vignette a one-minute scene in a larger story. You Identified this as a contest entry which instantly puts it in a special class of writing. One where the author must try and incorporate a message within the confines of someone else’s idea. In this case, you had to construct a story from the picture above, two young gals drinking what appears to be coffee while setting on a sofa.

Reading through a story, I look for the author’s intent, their message, are they trying to educate, enrage, or are they looking for empathy or to disparage? Is their pose a statement of editorial, a comment on social discourse? Ok . . . You may be thinking, “Joey why are you bringing all this up.” Amazingly, the answer is because I found all of these things in your short story. How you managed to glean all these elements from this one picture proves your story mastery, and makes me question my ability to use my own imagination.

I found your contest entry’s approach original, and inventive. I think you included a great dramatic concept. Your story is a comment on social stigmas. It flowed well, meaning I didn’t feel distracted by it or pulled out of it to think about the meanings.

All these positive attributes make this story a quick easy read. However, there is still a couple of observation that I made. Some may be due to my personal experiences, so you must keep that in mind. I know this was just a quick contest entry, and we do not always invest the same level of emotion into these one-time use projects as we might in a chapter of a book or an article for a magazine. but here goes anyway:

Your opening of Josie in the nursery was a good idea for the hook, but I think you slipped when you let in the adoption portion before exploiting the full potential of the miscarriage. What do I mean by this, while we are lucky as a society to have declining rates of miscarriage and stillborn deaths. They are still common enough to touch many families. My own included, my first grandchild was lost at twenty-weeks and the emotion of that event permeated the very air of our existence for many weeks. My daughter-in-law and son were devastated, even now, nearly a year after the fact, the picture of little Haydan in her mothers arms with her father standing over them, the tears running down his face, make my chest ache. The photographer at the hospital captured the pain of their loss as legibly as if it were spelled out in ten-foot tall letters on a billboard.

Anyway, my point is that I think you broke the emotion of the miscarriage by discussing the adoption option, and why it was a problem. This before finishing Josie’s reason for being in the room.

Of course I am sorry, but just like my own works, you are still telling to much. I thought there was a lot of room to bring in more touch, smell, taste, sound, and more visual imagery. It is hard to explain without a comparison, so let me attempt to show what we could do with this opening:



The above is not meant to be better, no just different in that I think it completes the picture of Josie’s broken heart and brings her depression into full bloom before you take on the next burden to endure. That being their repeated rejection by the adoption agency. I think allowing the reader to share fully her emptiness works better at setting the stage, making the agency's inequity of the standards for defining family units even more loathsome.

I liked your attempt to show Josie and Kara as two potentially loving parents with their debate over the buying of more baby items. I liked your bringing the text message into play, showing the actual event depicted in the photo.

However, I thought you underplayed the excitement that Kara would have over her news. I thought the dialog was too casual. Ok, I know, I am just an old guy and it may be unconventional for me to put myself in the place of either of your protagonist. But, Josie is thinking all is lost, no baby, and now possibly her only other reason for life is going to dump her. While Kara, who, if she is really intuned with her partner, knows that her news is about the one thing that could console her heart sick partner. They both have been praying, pleading, and spending every resource on this dream, and now it is within their grasp. Well, all I can say is, if I were Kara, I would be peeing my pants with excitement. (don't you dare call me sissy boy, I will come sit on you, all six-foot-one and two-hundred and eighty pounds of me.)

Of course, I did tell you in the beginning that I didn’t always see things the same way everyone else does, and I suck at surprises, I can never wait until Christmas morning to give my wife her present.

Again, I know that this is a resolved story, and not something you will care much about with regard to rewriting or editing. But, maybe seeing a bit of the story from my POV might help you to drag one more perspective reader into the web you weave so well, maybe it helps make the next contest entry different.

Well, I hope there was something within this review that you can find helpful. It seems that I used almost as many words as you did in your short. I don’t know if that is a good sign or indicates overzealousness on my part.

I Look forward to your review of my efforts, obviously you can spin controversy, but is your command of expletives and rebuttal as proficient?

Joey C.
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