Why I Didn’t Win

I lost.

If you read yesterday’s post and you read Exquisite Loss, then you will understand this post.

I didn’t win the writing contest for a simple reason: I didn’t write a story.

What is a story? If you ask five authors or teachers that question you will get eight different answers. Some will discuss the story structure – it must have a beginning, middle, and end. Some will talk about the plot – there needs to be a defined plot. Others will even discuss the need for the main character to change.

Exquisite Loss has none of these things. The entire purpose of the story was to invoke an emotion. I think I succeeded in that. However, there was not structure, plot, or change in character. Therefore, it was not a story.

It’s funny how the human mind works. It can tell when something is wrong even when the person cannot define what it is that is wrong. Long ago a music teacher told me that every song needs to end on a certain note. I don’t remember the exact note, but I think it was the first note of the song.

To prove this, he played a bunch of tunes and ended before playing the last note. Listening to the tunes without the last note was like standing at the top of a long stairway. Your body expects you to take the first step down and actually leans forward in anticipation. Listening to those tunes made my ear lean forward, waiting for the last note. My mind knew the song was not complete.

Stories are the same way. You can read something, but if it doesn’t have structure, plot, or character change, your mind recognizes that something is missing.

That is what I learned by losing. 

Why Didn’t I Win?

Eddie doesn’t write romance stories. That’s the rule. The rule shall not be broken. 

With that said, I wrote a sappy story. It wasn’t intentional. I didn’t go out and say “Hey, let’s write a romance story.” 

There was a contest on a writer’s forum. I won’t name the forum because, in my opinion, there are some very odd people on those forums. The forum has a weekly writing contest where the subject is a single word or phrase provided by the previous winner. 

The week I entered the word was “exquisite”. Once I read the word the entire story flashed in front of me. It’s funny how that happens. I assume it happens to everyone. A complete memory embedded in your mind. 

The trick is getting it on paper. 

So I wrote it out, had it read by my wife and mother-in-law (aka: the Cruise Director and My Drinking Buddy), had it reviewed by The Teacher for grammar issues (thank you so much L!), and away it went. 

Four other stories were submitted. And this was when I discovered that the other aspiring writers are… odd. 

One story was about a magic ring. The concept was good, but it needed a lot of work and was difficult to read. 

One story was about a soldier in a desert who was carrying something exquisite, but it suffered from the same problem my story did (we’ll touch on that later). 

One story was about a boy who got insulted by a girl at a camp and essentially stalked her just to see her nude body. This was when I started to realize that there was something wrong with the people who were submitting these stories. 

The last story was about a teenage boy who sits in his room all day and plays video games and masturbates. He takes some really good drugs, stares at a van Gogh and then hangs himself. This is the story that actually won the contest. It is also the story that I found the most disturbing, not just because it won, but because the most people voted for it. That spoke volumes about the other authors on the forum. 

I personally liked the soldier in the desert story. But it was missing something. And what it was missing taught me a lot. 

The question is this – can you find what is missing in my story? Read it and think about it. Tomorrow I’ll let you in the secret I learned. 

To read Exquisite Loss, clicky clicky here. 

Exquisite Loss

Interior of a Restaurant by Vincent van Gogh

Macaire was late. 

He opened the door of the carriage before the driver had a chance to fully stop and open the door for him. He didn’t like disappointing her but couldn’t seem to stop himself from doing so. He rushed up the stairs to the door that the Maître D’ opened to hurry him in. As he stepped through the threshold, hands took hold of his coat and hat. They knew who he was and his weekly routine, thus they didn’t bother with the niceties of shallow greetings out of fear of his verbal reprisals. 

Macaire was late and the look on his face expressed it. The staff knew better than to slow him. 

As he stepped past the coatroom and looked into the main dining room he still held a glimmer of hope that she, too, was also late. It was a hollow hope that was dashed when he saw her at their table, the table they ate at every week. She had a glass of wine, a Pinot from his own vineyard, but it was barely touched. He knew he couldn’t judge how long she had been waiting from the amount of wine gone from the glass. 

He rushed to the table and feebly thought of explanations to tell her. He could explain to her the issues with the vineyard, the slow progress the workers were making removing vines infected with black rot. His quick anger was known and showed itself today in an argument with his eldest son. He didn’t have time to micromanage every aspect of the business, but his son needed to show a heavier hand with the workers. 

He could try to explain to her the problems he was having distributing the wine. The buyers from across the border into Germany were not purchasing in the quantities they used to. With the new leader and constantly changing laws it was difficult to maintain the profits he had seen in the past. 

In his focus to get across the restaurant to her a waiter almost ran into him. The waiter excused himself and Macaire could hear the English accent in his voice. A flash of anger rose inside Macaire at the thought of the finest restaurant in Hettange employing an uncouth Englishman, regardless of his ability to speak French. He didn’t slow his pace or respond to the waiter as he continued to walk. He simply kept an eye on him until her reached his table. He couldn’t mask the anger that was clearly visible on his face.

When he reached the table he glanced down to his wife. He could try to explain a dozen different reasons to excuse his tardiness, but he knew none of it mattered. He was late and had kept her waiting. And in that moment the disappointment with himself broke his own heart. 

Her dark hair was tied and braided into a single rope that was brought forward over her right shoulder. Her purple dress spoke of nobility yet did not border on the gaudiness that a younger woman would have worn. The necklace her mother and grandmother had worn was, as always, around her neck and she wore the bracelet from Paris he had given her so many years ago. 

He always saw her as he did when she was young and didn’t notice the greying of her hair or the slight wrinkles of age. He had made her wait and the sorrow of such an act hung heavily on his face. 

“What is wrong?” she asked when she looked up at him. 

He took her hand into his and said, “I need to ask a beautiful woman to dance and I fear her rejection. “

She stood and he led her to the dance floor where a few other couples were slowly dancing. He pulled her close and took in the light smell of her perfume. “I am sorry, my love” he whispered into her ear. 

“There is no need to be,” she responded. “The business is important. I know the struggles you have.”

She was so understanding, so gentle to him. If there was a temperament that was exactly opposite of his, his wife embodied it perfectly. When he was quick to anger, she was quick to reconcile. When he had nothing but harsh words, she would speak the most gentle.  She never angered with him, or at least showed any anger toward him. 

And because of that, disappointing her devastated him. 

“Adeline, you are too good to me. The vineyard should never keep you waiting. I should never keep you waiting. You deserve better than that. You deserve better than me.”

She stopped dancing and held his face in her hands. He lost himself in her eyes. “My love,” she started softly, “a man who strives to love better is better than a man who believes he loves enough.” She leaned forward and kissed him lightly. 

Macaire felt a thick lump grow in his throat and he held her closer. He tried as hard as he could to hold back the emotion and the effort made his chest quiver. He finally gave in and let the tears flow freely down his cheeks as he held her tighter. He didn’t care who saw him, how many eyes stared at him. To feel love to the core of your soul eclipsed any feeling of shame or embarrassment. 

“Your love is more exquisite than any man deserves,” he managed to say with a cracked voice. 

As the song came to an end, Macaire and Adeline made their way back to their table. As they sat back down and the waiter started them on their meal. Confit de canard followed the beginning entree of quiche. The braised duck was perfectly done, as it always was. After the main entree was completed the waiter brought a plate with Camembert and bread. The soft cheese was a perfect match with the Pinot. For dessert, small Madeleine cakes were offered. 

While the meal was perfectly done, it paled in comparison to Macaire’s wife, Adeline. And her beauty, while beyond compare, felt insignificant next to the depth of his love for her. 

He reached across the table and held her hand in his. He tore his gaze from her eyes to look at her hand. He closed his eyes to take it all in – the sound of her voice, the smell of the food, the warmth of love flowing through his veins. 

When he opened his eyes she wasn’t there. 

He sat on a broken chair in a restaurant that had been destroyed four years earlier. Two walls were crumbled, allowing a view of the cold grey street outside. The building across the street was also destroyed in the initial bombing of the German invasion. 

A rain had started while Macaire was sitting at the table dreaming of his lost wife. The water dripping all around him drowned out the sounds of the American troops that were yelling at him from the opening in the wall. “Go home!” they yelled at him in English. “You shouldn’t be here.” 

He looked up at them and, in an age past, would have felt his anger rise at the thought of an uncouth American even peering into the finest restaurant in Hettange. Another army of the uncivilized, he thought. They all call themselves liberators, but they all only took what they wanted and left what remained in ruin. 

His anger didn’t rise. Those days were long gone. His quick anger was replaced by constant anguish. 

Home? Home was where Adeline made her presence. Home was where his sons worked. Home was the vineyard that had been in his family for generations. 

Home was lost, burned, and destroyed by war. But the loss of everything he owned and loved was nothing. That was not the root cause of his anguish. 

He was late and had kept her waiting. And in that moment the disappointment with himself broke his own heart. He never made it to the restaurant on the night the bombings began. 

He missed the last opportunity to feel her exquisite love. 

Twas The Night Before Disaster

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.

The tree was put up in the great room with care.

We decorated the tree until we thought it was fair.

The family was nestled all snug in their bed,

The cats on the couch, with their hair beginning to shed.

The pug snored abruptly in the room down below,

And the spiders roamed freely around the mistle toe.

Then from the great room their arouse such a clatter,

We arose from our bed to see what was the matter.

The cats scattered to this way and that,

But the pug continued to snore into her sleeping mat.

The tree we had bought was so great and so tall,

It was a behemoth that was admired by all.

Taller than two men the tree once stood,

Taller was better and better was good.

When we arrived in the great room to see what had occurred,

We looked on in horror and didn't say a word.

The great tree that once stood so mighty and tall,

Had broken through the floor and now was only two feet tall!

It took us the morning to clean up the mess,

And regret the tall trees which we used to obsess.
The hole in the floor was bigger than we imagined,

But with skill and ingenuity a solution was fashioned. 

So next year the tree will be in a difference place, 
It will be put in a corner without a lot of space.
Now there is one warning given by us and the pug:

Do not step in the center of our new great room rug.

Merry Christmas!

A Little Closer

I remember when I was learning to program professionally. Programming was easy for me. Anything is easy when you start it at age 10. But programming professionally took time. There were different standards, varying expectations. Results were the only thing that mattered. 

So I purchased books. Many books. Big books. Books for beginners. Books for advanced programmers. Books with many pages. 

All of the books started the same. At the beginning were the instructions on how to display "Hello, World!" on the screen. Then all of the books progressed at different rates to creating objects, class modules, explaining the differences between properties and methods. 

On the one hand, each book I purchased didn't provide any additional useful knowledge. On the other hand, having a library on my desk made people think I knew how to program. 

This is called irony. Never trust a programmer with many books on his desk. Would you trust an accountant with every edition of "Idiot's Guide to Accounting" on his desk? 

In the end I realized that I was not going to learn programming by reading books. Everything I learned I learned by doing. I learned how to program by solving problems. I learned how to program efficiently by solving the problem of rewriting my inefficient code. I learned how to design programs by working on larger programs. 

This is how I learn. Other people can learn by going to school, taking courses, reading books, etc. I am cursed by only be able to learn something by experiencing it. 

And learning that has taking a large part of my life. 

So here I am, half-way through this life-long journey of life, trying to learn something new. And once again I am driven by a desire to buy instructional books. 

Maybe I haven't learned anything. 

I joined online writing forums. I did this because, when you look at how other writers started did, this is "how it is done". They expect me to critique the writings of others so my writing can be critiqued. 

On one forum I see people critique the life out of a story. The end result is something that completely lost the passion of the original version. 

On another forum I see someone use the term "easy peasey Japanessee" not once, but three times in a story. I am trying my best not to sound arrogant, but how I am supposed to critique that without destroying the author? 

So I took inventory on what it is I want to accomplish. Reading books and bad writing doesn't seem to be moving me in the right direction. 

I want to write because there are stories that I want to read that nobody else has been kind enough to write for me. My Patron Saints of Writing, Dan Abnett and Orson Scott Card, have come damn close. They went in slightly different directions than I would have and I must admit that I have enjoyed their direction more than anything I would have done. All other authors have failed me. 

It's not that there aren't great writers out there. There are many great writers who write great stories. They just aren't the stories that I want to read. 

Whenever I complete a novel I find myself wondering why the author didn't develop this relationship more or why didn't he explore that plot element better. The story could have been great if only they developed a bit more instead of focusing on gloss and action. 

Don't get me wrong, I love the gloss and action. Probably more so than the next. But gloss and action without depth is like a sports car with no engine. 

And the moment I find a plot hole in a story I am ruined. It's destroyed for me. 

And if the author tells me, instead of showing me, then I can't continue. I'm looking directly at you, Frank Herbert. Couldn't get past page 10 of what I am sure is a great story because you beat the entire reason why the House of Atreides was replacing the Harkonnens on Arrakis into a two paragraph narrative that took me 45 minutes and six re-reads to understand. Good Lord, man, haven't you ever heard the phrase "show, don't tell"? If that's what you did within the first 3,000 words, what other boring history lessons do you have hidden for the readers? 

Sorry, bit of a sidetrack. The message here is that I need to write. I need to release these stories. And they must be released in a certain way. 

Conventional thinking is that fiction must be written in such a way that the largest audience will enjoy it. This thinking causes aspiring writers to join forums, get their works critiqued by people they don't know, and purchase books about writing. 

I believe that there are others like me who enjoy the same types of stories that I enjoy. I write for those people. 

If I am wrong, then I am writing for myself. 

I am a little closer to my goal now.