FROM LAWRENCE KISER
The bright sun shines down upon the world, lighting the earth in a torrent of unrelenting blissful luminance. Normally one would look around at a landscape illuminated by a midday sun and feel reassured by the beauty and majesty of life, and the power of the all-encompassing rays of the life giving heavenly body. However, no matter the brilliance, no matter the majesty, and no matter the assurance that the sun will indeed continue its course through the sky no matter what happens below it, the beauty of the day is lost upon me as I speed down the highway, struggling with my thoughts.
The white and yellow lines of the well-kept asphalt race below me, forming a track straight to the horizon, and lined with trees that struggle in vain to reach ever closer to the sun, providing shade for everyone on the highway. Everyone aside from me it seems. The sun glares down in omnipresence, catching my eye with sprays and shafts of inescapable annoyance that I continue to struggle desperately against. No matter what way I shift in my seat, or how I move the visor, or what turn the seemingly endless stretch of highway takes, the glare is ever-present in the corner of my eye, half blinding my view of the road.
As if the blinding light from above isn’t enough, the other half of my vision is continuously filled with the happenings of the night before. In retrospect it is probably more accurate to say this morning, since the happenings before midnight weren’t at all unpleasant. The events leading me here, to this endlessly dull drive down New Jersey’s southbound 295 interstate, were nothing more than the fulfillment of a half-a-life fantasy. Nothing, however, can prepare a young adult male’s mind for the rueful truth of a fulfilled dream.
I’ve driven this road far too many times for me to even beginning recounting them. A former job in this part of the state left me with a thirty-minute drive to and fro work daily, and gave me an intimate knowledge of every pothole and exit on the stretch from the Delaware Twin span to the Pureland Business District. No amount of driving this highway has ever made it any less boring, and with the rerunning visuals of the night playing like a still-frame video scrapbook of hell through my mind, the drive is made more and more tedious, dreadful, and insatiably aggravating.
The sun catches me with another glint off the windshield as I make a soft turn right, following the highway. The line of trees on the right blocks the sun for a split second before pavement straightens out again, and the sun is right there in front of me again. If I was a little more paranoid or even a little less of a realist I would say that the sun was more aware of my crimes than I was, that it was hunting me to shed light on the horror of everything that I have committed.
A car-a fairly new red mustang-is coming up behind me at what could only be ninety miles an hour, and not a mile and hour slower. I’m going seventy-five, and by comparison he, or she, is getting closer and closer every second. Each moment the outline of blurry red becomes more and more distinct in the dusty rear-view, which now hides a small speck of the sun, allowing my only clear view to be the one behind me. Irony is something I was never keen on, now I remember why. The car is now close enough that the hood is the only part visible in the mirror, and so I adjust it, pushing the top back a bit to get a look at the driver about to be tailgating me.
The mirror skips back, and the world visible through it jumps about before it settles into position, but the driver is out of view already as they switch lanes to pass. I catch only a glimpse of blonde hair flailing about before only the passenger’s side of the car is visible. I focus my attention back to the road ahead, towards the insufferable glare, and wait for the blur of bright red to move into my peripheral. The slightest hint of color comes into the corner of my eye, the sun reflecting off it and now catching almost all my vision in glare, and it’s only when I realize that I’m being blinded for too long that I move my eyes to the side to see why the car has not passed yet.
Setting my eyes to the driver I realize I’m staring at a blonde bombshell. If I were the mood to be even the slightest bit concerned with anything at all, I would show a small amount of emotion. Something in the back of my mind twitches at the sight of her. Her blonde hair, as long as it is, accompanied by the pale complexion of her face and the high cheek bones reminds me of someone I’ve met over the course of the morning. As the resemblance becomes more and more uncanny in my mind-either a manifestation of my own inability to remove the visions and memories, or from the truth of the resemblance-I find myself aggravated by this woman. The only thing about her that seems to shatter the similarity between her and the image of the woman in my mind is the pair of huge aviator-style sunglasses she wears.
Her speed now settling more exact to mine, I notice that she’s eyeing the BMW I’m pushing headlong down the highway. Her eyebrows are arched above the top rim of the shades, and her head has a slight tilt to it, as if looking down at the car. Suddenly I remember the dents, dings, and scrapes that the vehicle has taken throughout the morning, and I can only imagine what her reaction would have been at the beginning of the night when this car looked like it just came off the sales lot. I still haven’t decided if it actually did or not. I would love to say that it had, but the miles on it betray the thinking.
Exit eleven, almost there.
I look quickly forward down the road as I see the exit sign in my peripheral, checking the traffic, in this case the lack-there-of, before looking back to her. She lets the sunglasses drop down to her nose, barely revealing a pair of sparkling blue eyes reflecting more sunlight than the fiery red of her car, for another glance at the car. She takes in the black, ruined, paint job on the BMW that, for all I know, isn’t even supposed to come out this year. With these kinds of dents on this kind of car, it’s more attention than I need right now with everything I’m running from.
I have to do something about this woman. Why is she following me? I can’t let her follow me down the next exit where I’m heading. The resemblance is too close, the connection too possible. I can’t take any more chances. I wonder at what point I actually began thinking of beautiful women as more harm than good. Probably five am.
CRITIQUE
Hi, Lawrence,
First, you sent me about 5,000 words - the general limit is 1,000. That's naughty. Ten demerits for you. I posted only the first 1200 words.
Second, I decided to give it a go anyway just to see if I liked it. I didn't. There's a whole lotta high-sounding nothing in there. I suffered through about 900 words, then skimmed about 1,000 more, and I couldn't take it any more. The piece is WAY overwritten, and sloooooooooow. I think you could cut it by about 50% - 60% and improve it vastly. Cut way back on the adjectives. You could drop the first two paragraphs from this piece without too much hurt that I can see.
Third, don't feel too bad. This is a common problem with first person present tense. Writers enjoy "being" their main character so much, they forget they need to tell a story. They're involved with their MC's thoughts, emotions, what he sees and feels...but lemme tellya, reading about every emotional and mental burp and fart of a person gets old REAL fast. People don't want to read about what some narcissistic yay-hoo thinks about something. They want a story, and a story demands action and conflict. Typically, people act according to strong purposes. They want something, they go get it. Someone insults them, they insult back or maybe throw a punch. Your MC doesn't do squat. He drives down a highway, shows his gun to a girl driving beside him, and she gets squashed by a semi. Pretty darn random, and you expend all of 1900 words to portray that meager action.
Finally, my suggestion to all who exhibit this problem is to switch to third person past to force a little mental distance from the MC. You're no longer the MC, but a narrator telling the MC's story. That little bit of distance often enables a writer to be a little more objective about the writing and more concerned with the story. First person present requires quite a bit of mental discipline to write successfully.
So, third person past, cut way back on those adjectives, and let's have some action!
RESPONSE
Haha. Thanks for the reply. I saw a friend of yours plug your site on reddit earlier, read some of your critiques, and was morbidly interested in a critique of something I wrote long ago. Thanks. It was great to hear an honest response. When I wrote that about 10 years ago, my pretentious college-fresh friends raved about it.
It's nice to hear someone say things that I thought about it myself. It's motivating to write honestly and to not let external forces encourage poor habits.
Keep doing what you're doing. It's great.