Well, well, well. Seems my writer's group thinks I ought to axe the entire opening scene of "Bernie Aragon, Jr. Looks for Love" and start, instead, with what was originally the second section of the piece:
Bernie often imagined--and why should he not?--that the pretty and not-so-pretty girls he held in his arms under the dimmed lights of the Paramount Dance Hall were the girls he had grown up with in Bacolod. That their hair carried not the scent of drugstore shampoo, but the perfume of coconut oil and salt water. That they were never taller than he, but rather just the right size to rest their small heads against his shoulder. "I'm Kathy," one would whisper into his ear. "That's beautiful," he would answer, silently re-naming her Pansing, Naty, Marites.
And they think it should be longer. Much longer. Which is what they always say about my stories, almost all of which seem to end abruptly--with no conscious effort on my part--at a wimpy eight or ten pages. But I have a fear of boring my reader, I think. Here are two things that I dread:
1) That someone will leave my house hungry
2) That someone will read something of mine and think Good God. Will this never end?
and a bonus:
3) That someone will shave off my eyebrows while I'm sleeping
Good God. Will this never end?
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