Adrift in the Mainstream, Page 1
CONCEPT
I want to exploit you.
Not really, but I've been spending the last eighty minutes revising (for the nine millionth time) the first page of my novel/thesis project Adrift in the Mainstream, and it's one of those situations where I've dissected and reassembled the damn thing so many times I feel completely unable to track it. That is, am I butchering the soul of the thing, or is it actually starting to make some sense? Or both or neither?
I'm going to post the first page here. Please let me know what you think, and please don't hold back. You've all been sweet talking about Dead Man's Chest, so now I'm all ears since things are a bit closer to home...
Your tender toes never felt such wind but once.
Your tender toes would never feel...
...
but then after all...
but then...
excuse me...
but you never were a very excessive or flagrant girl.
Always well grounded.
Always solid, reliable, feet on the ground to use a figure of speech, and your tender toes never felt such a desperate push and tug but once. I know because I was there. At the edge of Lake Michigan. Down at the Warren Dunes. Up on the beach. You might as well have been standing at the ocean's side, what, the way those slow gray waves rolled along that midnight shore. Sand black and heavy. An afghan fog. A breezy turn of the cog.
I know you never thought yourself sensitive to things like these. But the wind is persuasive. Am I right? Everyone has to have a moment. Am I right? Everyone has to breathe now and then.
I can see that weekend in its entirety. First, nothing new. All recycled. You piled in the station-wagon when Betty and Bast had finished combing their hair. They thought, maybe, that Penelope Cruz and Nicole Kidman would commit suicide and resurrect themselves within the skin of a twin. And Rodney? Rodney was atrundled up with two diapers: one on his rump and one on his head. He drooled onto his stubbly chin. These three sat in the back.
Up front sat mom and dad in stony silence. You drew them in class sometimes. Your teachers called you an excellent artist, but you knew the truth. These people were easy to draw. Children owned by parents with souls might run into trouble, what, with the rendering of emotion and all.
You sat in the hatchback, sideways, seatbelt off, reading the finest of R.L. Stine and Christopher Pike because they built the range of depths and drains you plumbed back then. The family, on the other hand, left you alone and you thanked greasy God and read on in silence like your sweet Aunt Carr had taught you.
The cement cord of I-69 roped down, languid about Lansing. It hooked into the chord of I-94 which bowed toward the hoop of Indiana before loping and looping into Chicago. But halfway through Berrien County your parents left the expressway and pulled over at the Warren Dunes State Park. They paid $5 so you could set up a tent on the empty and apocalyptic parking-lot on the shoreline. When the engine shut off, even Bast and Betty stopped talking, exhausted from their hours of shouting.
"Will there be rats?" you asked.
Here are some things I'm wondering specifically.
1. How is the title? It's had both attackers and defenders. One criticism is that it has too much "spin." But I think I might like the "spin." What is the "spin" and is it good or bad.
2. What sense can you make of what is happening in this first page?
3. Are you inclined to keep reading, and why or why not?
4. What do you think of the characters from this first page?
5. What do you like, what irritates you, and what pisses you off?
If you want, I'm happy to critique your projects as well...
END OF POST.
Your tender toes would never feel...
...
but then after all...
but then...
excuse me...
but you never were a very excessive or flagrant girl.
Always well grounded.
Always solid, reliable, feet on the ground to use a figure of speech, and your tender toes never felt such a desperate push and tug but once. I know because I was there. At the edge of Lake Michigan. Down at the Warren Dunes. Up on the beach. You might as well have been standing at the ocean's side, what, the way those slow gray waves rolled along that midnight shore. Sand black and heavy. An afghan fog. A breezy turn of the cog.
I know you never thought yourself sensitive to things like these. But the wind is persuasive. Am I right? Everyone has to have a moment. Am I right? Everyone has to breathe now and then.
I can see that weekend in its entirety. First, nothing new. All recycled. You piled in the station-wagon when Betty and Bast had finished combing their hair. They thought, maybe, that Penelope Cruz and Nicole Kidman would commit suicide and resurrect themselves within the skin of a twin. And Rodney? Rodney was atrundled up with two diapers: one on his rump and one on his head. He drooled onto his stubbly chin. These three sat in the back.
Up front sat mom and dad in stony silence. You drew them in class sometimes. Your teachers called you an excellent artist, but you knew the truth. These people were easy to draw. Children owned by parents with souls might run into trouble, what, with the rendering of emotion and all.
You sat in the hatchback, sideways, seatbelt off, reading the finest of R.L. Stine and Christopher Pike because they built the range of depths and drains you plumbed back then. The family, on the other hand, left you alone and you thanked greasy God and read on in silence like your sweet Aunt Carr had taught you.
The cement cord of I-69 roped down, languid about Lansing. It hooked into the chord of I-94 which bowed toward the hoop of Indiana before loping and looping into Chicago. But halfway through Berrien County your parents left the expressway and pulled over at the Warren Dunes State Park. They paid $5 so you could set up a tent on the empty and apocalyptic parking-lot on the shoreline. When the engine shut off, even Bast and Betty stopped talking, exhausted from their hours of shouting.
"Will there be rats?" you asked.
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