On any normal rainy day, Meg would be buying pink mealy tomatoes indoors, not squashing through puddles at the farmer's market searching for the real thing. Actually, on any normal rainy day she'd be staying home eating boxed mac and cheese or the end of a tube of Pringles.
But Mom was coming for lunch--had, in fact, invited herself for lunch. And fifteen months ago, in the summertime, Meg had served her mother a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich that lived on in legend and song.
At first, Mom had been politely unimpressed. A sandwich listed on diner menus? But her attitude had changed when she bit into toasted homemade bread, hand-beaten mayonnaise, shattering bacon, overpriced pink boutique salt, and tomatoes less than an hour out of the garden. That BLT had been the product of one of Meg's rare culinary frenzies, a masterpiece never to be duplicated.
But Mom expected her to duplicate it. She had rarely expressed such approval for anything that Meg had done. And Meg wasn't (yet) ready to lose the legend over a little rain.
Image: Wikimedia Commons.
Nice descriptions. I like your writing style. Am also impressed with your 200 WPD resolution. Feel free to delete this comment, by the way, but I have to point out the misuse of the dash (it's one of your favorite mistakes). Hit the dash button twice to make an emdash--and NO spaces on either side! Your writing is just WAY WAY WAY too good to be sabotaged by a pesky little punctuation mark that mere mortals misuse, but that YOU (my first find on the web who can actually WRITE) cannot allow to poke holes in gorgeous prose.
ReplyDeleteThanks very much! I should say that not every 200 WPD is going to get posted to the blog, but I do find that the possibility of posting it seems to increase the motivation, both to write and to edit.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the correction on the dash--I'm always happy to know when I'm committing an error. I choose to make some errors, but how's anyone to know that? So I'd always like to know, and in this case it definitely wasn't deliberate. I hope I've got it correct now, both in the post and in this comment?
I have read but a few of your stories here and always find your first graph so compelling. Way to go.
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean about posting to the ether. If just ONE person reads it, it puts this really delicious pressure on you to make it just a little bit better. I worried the past 24 hours that I might have offended you with my emdash crap. I'm so glad you took it the way I would. And in that spirit, I am genuinely interested in feedback and critiques of my posts. Obviously we have different writing styles, but like the Supreme Court's definition of obscenity, I can't DEFINE good writing, but I sure know it when I see it. I see it here, and if you see it on my site, I welcome ALL criticisms. Friends are too nice, you know? And please put up as many 200 WPD as you want. I plan to read them all.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Christine! I should disclose that for this particular one, Himself gets credit for the fact that the first paragraph _is_ the first paragraph. I had a watery fluffball bit of scene setting starting it before, and he pointed out that it should just be sliced off.
ReplyDeleteHey, HappyDog! I love your blog and your writing. I hesitate to criticize, myself, but I'll keep in mind that you're offering an open invitation. :) And I do appreciate any comments/criticism that you have on mine. (And I'm delighted that you'll be reading them!)
ReplyDeleteAnd that's how we learn, isn't it? Himself is a smart guy!
ReplyDeleteYep! He's a very fine first critic. :)
ReplyDelete