Dear Forrest,
I receive emails from bloggers who say what a good writer you are while a few are somewhat critical. I wonder if you would like to analyze your writing. It would be nice to know what you think. ~jenny
Jenny,
Since I hid my treasure I can’t get by with any malfunctions in my writing. I received emails from two English teachers who criticized my use of commas and semi colons, and each one corrected me in a different way. So I just punctuate the way that looks right to me and hope that no one sends me marijuana cookies. But don’t you think I should get high marks for doing the best I can?
Here’s my first attempt at fiction, and it may contain some errors.
I hope some of your readers will comment about what I did wrong. Please tell them I’m taking notes. f
Beautiful Dreamer by Forrest Fenn
There was this girl who lived just down the block and around the corner. Delores was her name and we were special friends. It didn’t take her family long to add up their assets, and that gave me an idea.
The Senior Prom was coming up and I said if she’d make all C grades or better I’d give her a new dress for the ball. Her whole face grinned because she was worried she’d have to wear her big sister’s hand me down pants suit again. I guess it’d been handed down a few times already.
But Delores was still young and didn’t have many living experiences so I devised a plan that I hoped would help her grow some trail mojo like me. I started giving her gifts that were nothing good, like a feather one time, and a picture of Johnny Dukakis, and other things like that. And some different colored Wriglets of course. This went on for several weeks.
Sure enough, she finally came to me and said to not give her anything else. I had fed her up with junk and I secretly smiled. Ha, now to spring the trap. “Look,” I said, if you don’t want gifts from me anymore lets shake hands and make the deal final so it would be unethical for me to give you things again.” She smiled and we shook.
Then I said “Delores, I am proud of you for thinking things through and knowing what you want. You are such a wonderful person. But now I can’t give you a new dress for the prom, and I can buy myself something nice with that money.” Suddenly her eyes looked like two Texas road maps in the rainy season.
I knew her mother was going to call me and it didn’t take her very long for that to happen. She said I was mean and uttered a word I’d heard once in the pool hall. I just told her to let Delores figure something out and hung up the phone right then because I didn’t want my cell battery to run down.
Well, that very afternoon here came Delores sloshing through the mud and ringing my bell. She said, “Mister Fenn I want to unshake our deal.” “What,” I muttered? She told me that if you can shake to seal a deal you should be able to unshake it away and she went on to explain. “If you count a pig’s tail as a leg how many legs would the pig have?” I told her “five, of course.” She shined and said “No, a pig has four legs. Just because you count the tail as a leg doesn’t mean it is one,” and she kind of snickered. I thought that was a good analogy so we high-fived three times with our left hand. That, she explained, is how you unshake a deal and I decided her mojo was ok after all.
The story had a wonderful ending and I’m a little proud of myself. The fifteen dollars, plus tax, that I paid for that beautiful dress was the best money I ever spent. f
So? What do you all think of the above story? Forrest said to tell you he was taking notes on any suggestions you might have to make it better…..