I started writing this after I completed a Creative Writing class wherein I finished my first short story. I'd written a lot of things, but never a complete actual story. Actually finishing a story jumpstarted my confidence that I could actually write, and this was one of my failed follow-ups. This is overwritten to the point where you can't follow the action, so my re-write will just be to state things plainly. "She sat down in her rocking chair." "The kid who showed up was her grandson." Etcetera.
This kind of writing is frustrating when I read it from other aspiring writers, but until I re-read this, I didn't realize I was THIS guilty of it. The overwriting comes from a lack of confidence that the story will be interesting enough, so I tried to make every sentence an interesting way to describe a normal thing.
This is the back story of the love interest (Lee) of a play that I wrote in the same Creative Writing class. He grew up as a grifter with his mother, who dropped him off at his grandmother's house one day when he was ten, and didn't show up again until he was eighteen.
Original (2009):
The soft cushions of her rocking chair enfolded her and she set it moving, waiting for the rhythm to catch up to the beat of her heart. The table was ready, blue-and-white checks spread out under neat stacks of pies. Not a hint of last week’s bubblegum or dirt stains visible on the hand-crocheted tablecloth. The hum of the other families setting up their booths was a song against the anticipated bombardment of noise the afternoon would bring.This was the moment that Granny savored every week. Before the market opened, when everything was clean and quiet. Before the obnoxious customers with their screaming kids and inappropriately personal comments and idiotic questions and -- money -- her gaze ran over the table again. The orderliness of it made a straight line for her gaze to follow until it bumped into a slender shadow leaning against the edge of the table. The kid with eyes older than hers, watching her.
He’d shown up a week ago, waiting on her porch when she’d gotten home from the market. She’d forgotten about him for a few minutes, lost in the ritual of opening. She searched for something to say, an apology or some phrase to persuade him he’d been a constant part of her consciousness. He shook his head slightly, impassive as always.
“You make three dollars per pie, right?”
It was unnerving to see such a calculating look on the face of a young boy. She almost lied but couldn’t figure out what she could say that would take that look away. “Yep.” The chair rocked her, soothing her with its smooth movement.
“Last week you had pies left over.”
“There are usually a few left at the end of the day. I donate them to the church.” His lip curled slightly but so quickly that she questioned whether she’d seen or imagined the disdain. His smile was sudden and charming and the almost definite falseness of it was alarming.
“I’ll make a deal with you,” he said. “If I sell all of your pies, I get to keep whatever the mar-- the customer leaves over the three dollars.”
The idea of customers leaving more than the absolute minimum shook a laugh out of her. “I can cut you in on the profit if you’ll help me…” Compassion made the chair rock faster. She slowed it, deliberately. “Don’t count on any tips.”
The smile curled at the sides of his mouth but his eyes knew more than he was sharing. He cocked his head back, arrogance and magnanimousness in the sweep of his gaze. “Just whatever they pay over the three dollars will do.” He turned, leaving her with the impression that he’d shown his back in order to shield her from his contempt.
She breathed a sigh. So much like his mother…
Through tight and shiny eyes, she looked toward the market entrance. Twenty-or-so early-birds were clustered around the corn and zucchini booths. Some had broken away from the pack and were investigating the Lincoln’s peaches.
Updated (2025):
Granny sank into the soft cushions of her rocking chair. She tuned out the hum of the other families setting up their booths for the farmer's market as she inspected the setup of her own booth. The six-foot long folding table was covered with a hand-knit, blue-and-white gingham table cloth. Lace shawls swagged their way around the table like frosting on a cake. Exactly twenty pies in pristine white bakery boxes were spaced out evenly on the table.Granny's chair was set up at the northeast corner of the table. It was real wood that creaked when she rocked in it, and its cushions were patterned with red apples on a sky blue background that matched the darkest color blue in the gingham tablecloth. Next to the table, in front of her chair, was a large wicker picnic basket, with a partially finished afghan pouring out of the open flap. A ball of yarn with two knitting needles poking out of it was set on the closed flap of the basket.
Inside the basket was her money box. Under the table was 80 more pies. She hadn't baked any of them, including the twenty on the table. She hadn't knitted the tablecloth or the afghan. She hadn't crocheted the shawls swagging the table. She knew how to knit, barely -- just enough to seem like she was working on really impressive projects. The truth was that her neighbor Sally would allow Granny to borrow her knitting project for the farmer's market, Granny would fumble her way through a few rows throughout the day, and she'd return it to Sally to frog and fix.
Nothing about Granny was what it seemed. She was Lee's grandmother, but she was only forty-one, and she used make-up and hair dye to make herself look twenty years older. She'd lied to her neighbors and friends about Lee, saying that he was her great-nephew instead of her grandson.
Lee had been waiting on her porch, last week, when she’d gotten home from the market. No luggage, just the worn jeans and a t-shirt that fit okay, and shoes a size too small. He'd looked her up and down, noting the make-up, the fake hunch, the forced slowness of her movements. "Pretty good," he'd said, judiciously. "But the wig...." He shook his head.
Granny couldn't help but laugh, involuntarily straightening for a moment. She hadn't seen the kid since he was a newborn but he had his mother's bone structure and cadence. Her daughter had wanted to stay and raise the kid in Smithville but it was too dangerous. So, ten years later, she wouldn't have sent Lee to live with his grandmother unless she was in even worse trouble.
“You make three dollars per pie, right?”
The question pulled Granny out of her reverie. Lee was watching her with his unnervingly adult gaze. She eyed him back, which made him grin. She hated market day, and never felt particularly chatty in public, so she kept her answer to a short, "Yep."
“Last week you had pies left over.”
He knew that because he'd helped her drop the leftover pies off at the church. What he didn't know was that she generally held a dozen or so pies back, just for that purpose. "Mmmhmm..." she murmured noncommittally.
“I’ll make a deal with you,” he said. “If I sell all of your pies, I get to keep whatever the mar-- the customer leaves over the three dollars.”
She halted the rocking chair. She didn't want to sell the pies for over three dollars. She purchased the pies at a buck apiece and the markup was already high enough that she was pushing it. The fact that she was a little old lady, widowed and nearly penniless, as far as the community knew, was the main reason she was able to get away with her exorbitant pricing.
However, she hated the front-facing side of her little business. The customers with their grubby little kids and the same small talk every week. She ended her markets feeling exhausted and every bit the sixty-plus years she pretended to be.
"No," she said. She saw his shoulders slump. She started the chair rocking again. "But I'll pay you fifty cents for every pie that you sell."
Lee brightened. "Plus tips?" he asked.
She stopped the chair again, shocked at how quickly he'd pivoted into a new scheme. "Sure," she said. She leaned toward him without breaking eye contact and said quietly, "But if you pick any pockets, I will make you give it all back."
He tried to look offended, but ended up just grinning sheepishly. "Deal."
"And then," she added, knowing that this wasn't enough of a threat, "I'll take you around to every single house on our block and make you confess to everything you took and who you took it from."
His expression darkened at this. He could con his way into forgiveness from any mark he had to return anything to -- assuming she was smart enough to catch him. But strangers hearing about what he did would be much harder to charm. In a town with just over four thousand inhabitants, most of whom were related by blood or marriage, it would be foolish to alienate a single one of them.
She watched him absorb this information, digest it, and then she saw the darkness lift from his expression. Alright. He'd have to behave himself honorably, for now. But as soon as he'd saved enough to run away, he could make a real score before skipping town. She had no illusions that he planned to stick around any longer than he absolutely had to before running of to rescue his mother from whatever trouble she'd gotten herself into.
He nodded, accepting her challenge with a determined smile. Then her turned toward the entrance, where a few early birds were wandering from the parking lot toward the booths closest to the entrance.
Final Thoughts:
I'm much happier with this. Every sentence doesn't need to be poetry. I tend to start these critiques/revisions feeling overwhelmed and unequipped. I generally want a nap about halfway through. I generally TAKE a nap about halfway through, this was no exception. I actually started working on this yesterday. It doesn't seem like 500 words (or nearly 1000 words that we ended up with) should be that challenging.
And I will say that editing my own writing is harder than editing the work of other people but I get overwhelmed with those too. It's not always immediately apparent what the problem is or how to fix it. I do enjoy it, and I generally end these feeling accomplished and satisfied. I wonder if the overwhelm will ever go away, or if it's just hard-wired into me.
