Wanted: Notoriety

Wanted: Notoriety

Munching on a slice of bagel with her left hand, her right hand clicked on the mouse until finding her submitted piece in the contest section. She wasn’t really expecting glowing feedback in this case, but one never knew. She’d had a couple bad appraisals in the past and it had taken her some time and mental strength to move past them, it was time to see if she’d been successful.

 She understood that her grammar and punctuation needed work that she wasn’t ‘all that’ as a writer. It had also been pointed out to her that she needed to draw out her characters’ personalities, a recent anonymous reviewer posted, ‘Ms. Marwood could use a course in acting and speech so she grasps how real people talk, her conversation pieces are as old and as wooden as the Ark’.

That comment had sent her ego into a tailspin and while she didn’t join a drama group, mostly because of the pandemic restrictions, she did edit the crap out of everything she wrote for months afterward. It ultimately annoyed her that she let some random stranger affect her confidence to such a degree. She took a bit of sulking time then ploughed on and continued entering contests, anonymous reviews be damned.

Today she was determined to be a grown-up and accept what other scribes thought of her work. She would take it in the ‘constructive criticism vein’ in which it was intended. When her eyes caught the five-star graphic her heart almost stopped. Only one of them was filled in. She didn’t want to see anymore, her feet wanted to walk away from the table and the little girl inside her wanted to throw a tantrum. One stinking star! What was the point of continuing at this rate, was she fooling herself all this time? Were people that complimented her pieces just being nice or worse, conciliatory?  

She’d been writing for as long as she could remember, going from paper and pen back in the seventies to a couple of typewriters through the eighties and nineties. She’d had writing jobs on school and community newspapers and even hosted a couple of blogs. She deemed herself a writer and would tell people that if they asked. After recently retiring from a social work career, she had the time she always said she craved to just write for herself.

It always sounded cliché to her own ears to say she was working on a novel, but she was, well had been. She’d  cruelly deserted her main character in a resort city months ago. She had plans to go back in and finish the plot but her interest at this juncture was in the wane, it had turned to entering an assortment of writing competitions.

She grinned every time she pushed send with her credit card details swimming into the ether. She didn’t always enter with cash, if she weren’t completely in love with the story herself she didn’t click on the pay tab. She knew that being okay with just putting her stuff out there was a necessary exercise, she reminded herself of a quote she’d seen once, ‘To be a writer, you write’.

 She didn’t share her writing with many people in her life off-line aside from one friend. Her hubby left her to it, only interrupting her rapid key tapping if the day was stretching and he was bored. It wasn’t that Albert didn’t care about her writing but she’d long ago stopped asking him if he wanted to read a piece. It worked for both of them, he didn’t want to hurt her feelings and she didn’t want them hurt.

Her index finger moved the wheel on the mouse down to where the written comment supported the measly star above it. She noted the author’s name and blew her bangs up with a sharp breath, she knew this woman, they’d actually chatted online and Anne had the misguided belief that they were in synch with each other. As she read the words, all two hundred and thirteen of them, her eyes filled and her breath shallowed. This woman, this bitch had penned a complete condemnation of the piece. She sat back hard, her spine finding the wooden spinets. The pain was nothing compared to what her eyes and heart were dealing with, however.

Left hand found her mug while right continued scrolling. It went up to the top again and again as her mind came to grips with the tone and pace of the words.

“I’m having a difficult time reviewing this piece as I know and like the author. I sincerely hope she’s not suffering a health crisis but if she is, it would explain this submission. ‘A Lady’s Day’ had absolutely none of Anne’s usual humour or flair for historical costume dramas, in fact it’s like she watched an episode of Downton Abbey and copied the script, poorly! Her characters all lack personality aside from a couple of simpering sisters. Her main male character is described as some kind of blend of Rhett Butler and Matthew  Mcconaughey, I don’t know if he even knows what country he lives in or even what time period. The female lead appears to be suffering from some medical condition as she’s continually fainting and oddly she’s caught by ‘Matt/Rhett’ every time, is he just standing around waiting? Rebecca’s beauty is mentioned continually but in contrast her only skill is in cinching her waist to an unrealistic twenty-two inches. So that’s just the plot, if you can call it that. Let’s get to the prose portion shall we? Again, I preface all of this constructive criticism with genuine respect and that’s why I deigned to give her one star. I’m confident she has talent in there somewhere. So, the punctuation is first on my list of concerns, it’s like she had a handful of comma’s and semi-colons and just blew them onto the page willy nilly! Her syntax is scarily askew throughout the piece and the double negative on the second page had me shuddering. Sentence structure took the back seat throughout the debutante ball scene as if we were all supposed to ignore it and pay attention to the descriptions of the gowns instead. Reading this piece was painful frankly, it didn’t flow and overall was as poorly put together as the unfortunate spinster on the sidelines of the ball! Please try again Anne, we’re rooting for you dear.

The last line just about did her in. ‘We’re rooting for you dear’. Who did this woman think she was, anyway? Who died and made her the world’s best editor? She stood and gathered her dishes and walked them back into the kitchen as calmly as she could. Thoughts filled her head and some of them were even constructive. Some were doable for sure and only a couple were actually legal. She knew where Leila lived as they’d exchanged general information months back. It wasn’t that far away, she could make it there and back in forty-eight hours, she’d just tell Albert she was going to visit a friend on the island, he’d never suspect. She found the sponge and squeezed the water from it, when it had stopped dripping she kept up the pressure and noted the  strength in her hands. ‘Maybe I should use my hands for something besides word processing my dear Leila’ she muttered. Albert spoke up and asked who she was talking to. She told him she was just practicing her a line for a story she was writing. He nodded and turned back to the game again. She watched the back of his head, the arm encased in a soccer jersey resting on his recliner, remote in the same hand. It was always in his hand if he was sitting down. Her ire was rising, anger at the review, dissatisfaction with pretty much everything else, she knew she had to get away and find a way to come to terms with things so she made a plan.

She walked through the front door, dropped her backpack in the hall, and gave her hubby a big hug, it had been forty-eight hours after all. He asked about the visit with her friend in Parksville and  providing some ‘girl talk’ generalities, she started on dinner.

It was on the ten o’ clock news the following night. The anchorman reported that a woman’s body had been found in North Vancouver, her neighbours said she was a writer but the police couldn’t ascertain that for sure. There were no tools of a writer around; aside from the cord of a laptop wrapped around her throat. All signs pointed to the killer knowing the victim, and it was here that they announced her name. They noted the killer had likely been welcomed in as there were two coffee cups on the kitchen table. The city police were working with the RCMP Investigation Team and were looking through building security tapes and checking her cell phone. They would keep the public updated as this was the death of a local celebrity.

Albert mused aloud about what the world was coming to before queuing up Coronation Street from their list of recorded shows. She couldn’t help but be distracted and although the Mancunian accents and the general plot filtered into her brain, her fingers ached to return to her laptop and start on her next project, a murder mystery.