hkjh

First off, welcome to Able2know.

I think you have the kernel of a very good story here, but it's bogged down by some very (to my mind) unnecessarily fancy wording. Degenerative dotage? How about just decay, or aging (I realize the original is alliterative - was that your intent?)? . The advantageous chance to view the sunrise through the glistening jalousie of the infirmary? How about the opportunity to see the sunrise through the glistening hospital window? See where I'm going with this? This guy's a soldier. That doesn't necessarily mean he's uneducated but I think for the story to move, the words have to move more quickly, if that's making any sense to you.

Also, I bet you're British. How do I know that? Because an American would never say, "I'll give you a ring later"; we'd say, "I'll call you later". And, Private Everest (is that symbolic?) wouldn't measure his brother's progress in meters, particularly as long ago as the Second World War - he'd be measuring Jonah's disappearance in feet and inches.

I hope this is of help to you.

Jespah you picked up on my attempts at alliteration it aided in my attempts to overcome my block. I understand your position on my choice of vocabulary and that coincides with your assumption that im british, i am indeed an american just a overzealous fan of british literature and i think martin amis is having an adverse effect on my writing by subconsciously getting me involved with righteous wordplay. I intended to work with various themes the one i aimed for was a man in his senility understands his conformist ways to ww2 was incorrect, but that was my unabashed liberilism running amuck, so it came down to a soldier accidently (believe it or not) being awarded the congressional medal of honor and seraching for redemption at the grave of his brother who died because of his careless cowardice and hes dissappointent at the hiearchal system in place in the millitary. Thanks for bringing to my attention my subconscious language selection, and again thanks for taking time to review this so far stalled story. Cheerio Mate

No sweat! I have to tell you, I love the idea that the medal seems to have been awarded by accident. But that's what war (and memory) do to us - things get glossed over, or forgotten, and it takes some doing to get back to what really happened. So Franklin (another symbolic name? For frankness or for FDR?)'s own changing mental aptitude is bringing back what really happened, as opposed to the glossed-over, for meritorious service, yadda yadda yadda stuff from the medal ceremony (man, I'm inarticulate this morning; I need coffee :-D).

The point I'm dancing around is that the reason for giving the medal was false and kind of inflated. And Franklin is finally coming to grips with that because, as he gets closer to death, artifice is being stripped away (or, perhaps, his memory is really failing him, and maybe he thinks he's less brave than he truly was. He's the only witness and he's not reliable, so this is another possible theme). This is such a good idea. It's really believable.

Let us know how it goes. And cheerio to you, too!

PS Sorry I mistook you for a Brit.

You are sharp without the coffee, franklin everest is a suedo allusion to fdr. I did get conflicted with using the abhorrent flashback device, but do to a 1,500 word maximum i felt it would aid. Itll be a trick within 400 words to do. I'm consciously using pronouns to keep him as anonymous as possible in the present, because hes lost all identity with his guilt for living to see his 75th birthday when his entire platoon died along with his family identity in his brother. His mother never lived past seventy four years and three hundred sixty four days. The flashbacks were sewn in to give an identity to my anonymous protaganists fight. It was delayed by his harsh right wing fundamentalist feelings until now at the threshold of death and a fiece drunkard he can no longer hide it. I wondered if i was throwing the reader of by flashing back and flashing to the present in a cycle. I felt i need a progressive F.B. and that along would aid in the linear time progression during the present tense i.e. the reader experiences the pain as lucidly as anonymosu franklin does, its a rough premise and im sure i could reach an apothesis if i had say 2,600 words, i admit im a novelist a distance man, this format is totally new to me and my longwindedness is a disadvantage to the 10th power. I had to eliminate the medal cermony completely due to word limit and just used his anger at the hierarchys funerals and memorials being of such grandiosity and the actual one he loved and true heros get a headstone and a flag not even a bugler. I really need to do hardocore edit to establish that the emotional conflict arises out of guilt at beating the 74.6 year mark of life expectancy which hitherto gave way to dorman guilts from ages past. hey no problem believe me you arent the first person to mistake me for a brit even in person i give the accent a shot. Who knows i'm beginning to grant adulation to Yann Martel so itll probably be saying "aboot" next and since im a socialist im halfway there lol.

Ha, good stuff.

I like the fact that there's no medals ceremony. After all, there's a medal. Ergo, there was a ceremony at some point. I think it's redundant to put it in (why are you limited re word number, anyway? Is this for a contest or a class or something? Curious, ain't I?).

Anyway, yes, I think the idea that he's the last of his family, the oldest, the survivor et al is kind of important and probably should come to the fore a bit more. And it works on a number of levels - he's the survivor of the platoon, he's the survivor vis a vis his parents, etc. So he's the distance runner who isn't fast; he's just commended for going farther but not faster or better or anything like that. And he's slogged down by all that baggage - he's the last one left, he carries the burdens of memory, etc. The disability also links him to FDR.

Hmmm I have to run soon (I have to study - no I'm not a High Schooler - far from it! - I'm in Oracle DBA training and so I need to read up on SQL [which I realize sounds like Greek to most people]). But I'll be here tomorrow or later today if real life permits.

Very nice to meet you, Derrick and I hope to see more of you here! :-D

re:
actually the tiny literary magazines ive narrowed my submission hopes to all have a 1,110 word to 1,500 word limit so thier goes the constraints which i dont know to many writers who do well under, i kno plenty who happened to have written prose that coincidently fit into the mandatory range but i started from scratch with it. Its somewhat of an anomaly as to me wanting to impress the elitists at this point, guess my curiosity leads me to question where i would stand. I commend you for your insight, i guess ill be able to pound out the 400 words over about a week or so (net) and ill post up the final here.

Cool, and good luck with the submission!

Psst! Change the reference to the "Congressional Medal of Honor" to just "Medal of Honor". (That is the proper legal name for the medal. It's just a pet-peeve of a lot of us ex-military types. )

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Thanks for the heads up on reference