Frances An

Editor (Frances) comments Dear Gareth, The overall comment captures my impressions and suggestions for improvement. The smaller comments within the story below point out stylistic issues and reference the overall comment's themes to point at specific places and ways improvements can be implemented. Please let me know if you have any trouble viewing the smaller comments (I made 29, according to the comments count in the Review tab). Overall Comment I first read the story to understand the plot: Gordon is a middle-aged man whose life feels empty after his wife (and presumably the mother of his children) has left him. He tries to fill the gaping hole in his heart with superficial pleasures such as short-term relationships, drugs, his motorbike and (most importantly) poetry. Before going any deeper into the analysis, I should note that I read this as a female reader. Therefore, I may not read Gordon's character as generously as a male reader. Of course, writers should depict characters that resonate with them. When reading over one's work however, it can be useful to imagine how the writing would look from the perspective of a reader who is different to the character (or even better, find another person who can read it). A good analogy is when it comes to political commentary, a reader may be better at picking holes and flaws if they are of a different political persuasion compared to someone who is already sold into the writer's perspective. Just something to think about. There is a promising and deep character buried in Gordon. He comes across as self-entitled and that is not necessarily a bad thing, especially at the beginning. Gordon's negative traits such as the self-entitlement and -dramatisation suggest a character at the beginning of his healing journey. He has yet to reflect on his own role in personal misfortunes. My favourite aspect of Gordon is his poetic and melodramatic soul. Leaning into the melodrama, even to the point of mocking him, could ironically induce sympathy and understanding in the reader: a touch of ridicule could signal the enormousness of Gordon's misery, that he is losing his mind in an effort to put up a pretence of being a genius poet. However, the writing only skirts the surface of many aspects that deserve deeper exploration. There were elements that could be several pages or even a separate story alone. For example, I kept wanting to learn more about: - The motivation behind and lead up to him and his wife's separation - The estrangement from his daughter - Gordon's later unsatisfying relationships with women - His relationship with poetry -And more… Another small note is the font choice: it is a little difficult to read, especially on a computer screen. Editors for prose usually prefer 12-point Times New Roman (print) or Arial (for screen). Otherwise, I am pleased to say there were very few (if any) grammatical or typographical errors. Again, thank you for trusting me with your writing, Gareth. I think Gordon has a lot of potential to read as a very realistic and even likeable protagonist. The main issues were a need to delve more deeply into issues such as the marital/ familial breakdown and its aftermath. As the writer, you probably have the background knowledge to understand Gordon. But readers do not so you need to give them some context to work with and understand Gordon. Lean into his melodrama, the self-entitlement, the immaturity, while showing the reader that Gordon has space to mature (even at his late age) through the moments of self-reflection and shame that he exhibits in the story. Good luck: I hope these tips were helpful and that we can work together again. -Frances A Knight in Soul Armour Thousands of miles and several relationships won’t change a man’s mind about the one love of his life. She will though. That’s why thousands of miles and several relationships were between them. Gordon pushed his six-fifty into first gear and cranked the throttle enough for him to know he was riding into the wind again. As he changed up the gears and wound through the streets, he paid no attention to where he was going. Or why. How much of a man’s life can be torn from his soul when his woman, or the woman he thought was his, yanks the carpet from underneath him? No other woman makes a mark on a man with memories made in the glories of giving life through the loins of the one woman who ruled his world. Freedom unfurled. He was no longer curled up beside her in bed on a regular basis. His life was in stasis. Nothing mattered anymore. His dreams had been shattered. His kids were old enough to know who’s who and what’s what about the world and were scattered across two countries. He stopped somewhere, not caring where, and wrote: I sit in contemplation, trying not to rise to the irritation of not enough communication. The anticipation of elation caused by a concatenation of sounds, syllables, and sentences, increases as every silent second slides by. I want to know why she won’t talk to me. I see that there is something she wants to say but won’t. And I don’t know how to hew the virtue of voice from within the cave she’s crawled into. I walk away and we stay estranged, both our lives rearranged to accommodate the nothingness that grows between us. The bike beckons. He reckons it’s better to live without the fetter of a family. He takes the corners of the mountain pass, and the roads look like glass with occasional black ice patches that threaten to release the rubber from the road and unload his arse onto the grass at the sides of the road, and worst of all maybe give his bike some scratches. That would be the end of a very bad day. But what day hasn’t been bad since his daughter said, “You’re no longer my dad.”? “Teenage daughters do that to their dads,” one of his female friends said. “She was twenty-three when she said it.” She didn’t stay his female friend for long. All she was after anyway was a toke on his bong. He didn’t smoke a lot, but it helped to dull the pain of a dalliance with another Delilah, who didn’t do anything for him. He wondered why he bothered. Sex and drugs, and rock and roll, were all right for Ian Dury and the Blockheads. But he wasn’t one of them. Even the motorbike was an affectation for self-gratification. He’d spent his life trying to gratify others; his wife; their daughter and her two brothers. Doing that didn’t work apparently. No one seemed impacted by his existence, or the lack of his existence in their lives. So, he was on the road, trying not to get distracted, gearing down for corners, so no one who would be left behind could become mourners. Would they even turn up if he turned in his chips? Something was wrong. And Gordon hadn’t dug deep enough to find out what. And now it was too late. They’d shut the gate after he’d bolted on his steel horse. Of course, there’s no going back. They wouldn’t even fight. He’d be back out the door before the end of the first night home. Home... Where the hearth is... Where the bath is... He missed the bath. It was Japanese. He got it for her. He missed almost everything about what used to be his home, except for the loneliness. The house could’ve been a mess, and he couldn’t have cared less. If only she’d express herself. But no. The silent treatment, year after year. No amount of beer could drown out the awful audio annulment. Reading and writing kept him company while his wife kept feeding him, without fighting him or biting him. He learned the meanings of words he thought he knew, like superannuate. Its original meaning was, to make obsolete. Retirement stared him in the face. So, here he was being superannuated by her, decades before the government said he could collect his due. What to do? Walk out and ride off. He’d sometimes hear people scoff, but they’re not the ones not being communicated with. Some men said he was lucky. Their wives wouldn’t shut up. So, he rode alone and wrote poetry in the Notes app on his phone like: If life is meant to be lived to the full, it cannot be burdened with bull. There must be things like a lover’s kiss and sweet nothings to accompany it. Not just nothing!