Tagline: When art teacher Sue Becker assigns her students a special Father's Day project, she never imagines it will color her life with new love.
Observations: I thought this was an adorable story. When the call went out recently for Father's Day stories, I was like, "What? How does anyone write a story based on Father's Day?" Well, Main did. :)
I liked the humor about Simon's stick figure drawing in the middle of the story. It's always great to add humor and to show your characters having a sense of humor. That's one of the most popular traits people look for in mates, isn't it? But I was puzzled about this part:
"Would you consider going out to dinner with me tomorrow evening, Sue...to get to know each other a little better?"
"I'd like that," she said, her heart swelling. "On one condition."
"What's that?"
"That Simon doesn't draw any pictures of what we look like together."
Carson grinned. "Well, I"m sorry but I can't promise that," he laughed, squeezing her hand in his. "He loves to draw what makes him happy."
Why didn't she want him to draw a picture of them? She's his kindergarten teacher and hopefully appreciates children's artwork. Maybe someone can explain it to me in the comments. :)
Photo credit: Ruth Hartnup via Flickr CC license
7 comments:
Cute story. I loved it. Now that you mention it, I'm confused by the drawing comment. When I read the story I took it to mean she didn't want to end up a funny stick figure, but now I think it can be taken pretty racy by a reader.
I thought stick figure too. I just assumed she was bringing it back to their earlier conversation about the drawing of dad (not her critique of kindergarten drawing). I just saw it as ongoing extension of "the joke" that was laced through the story about the dad's "figure." And that conversation led to a pratty "racy" comment (for WsW) about him filling out nicely (which I liked). The answer - he "draws what makes him happy" was super cute. And definitely flirty. I thought it was a cute story - although jumping right into a dinner invitation on first meeting with a teacher seemed a bit sudden. But then it is only an 800 word story, so things had to escalate fast :-)
I loved this story. I agree with Kate that I wondered how a Father's Day story would fit in. It was perfect, though. I thought the comments were cute about the stick figure drawings not resembling the dad at all. I also didn't think anything of the comment at the end other than to tie in with the stick figures not looking like themselves. I didn't read anything racy into it. I did think the dinner invitation seemed a bit sudden, but he probably sensed she seemed interested. I also thought this was maybe a matchmaker story with the comment that Simon's grandmother had told him all about her. Also since he said Simon would be happy, I wondered if Simon hadn't been trying to match him with his teacher.
I'm playing catch-up reading my notebook of recent stories. As someone who care barely draw stick figures, I really enjoyed this one. Well done, Mary Ellen!
This is Mary Ellen, alias the writer of this story. This is my first time to visit Kate's blog and I couldn't resist popping over to the one story I've had published so far for Woman's World, out of a large number of submissions. The stick figure comment wasn't complex at all, as I recall, but was just a line of connection the teacher made to keep the conversation going. I don't know if the Dad was particularly flirty at the end with his comment about how Simon draws what makes him happy but I was hoping for a warm tone there - which I guess can be flirty, just not the racy thing mentioned in a couple of comments. It was meant to be pretty low-key and yet, as mentioned, with only 800 words to work with I wanted to work the dinner invitation in somehow. That left the story open-ended as to whether the relationship grew or whether it stayed at a friendship level. I was also intimated by the idea of writing for a "theme" but then realized that helped me focus better. It hasn't worked since then, though. I won't stop trying. Thanks to everyone for your comments! They help me get more eyes on the story.
This is Mary Ellen, author of this piece, again. I thought about the story last night and this morning pulled up the copy of what I submitted and the copy that was actually printed. First of all, the editors changed the title. I had called it, "Picture This" and they changed it to "Picture Bliss." My response was, "That's so much better. Why didn't I think of that?" I returned to the comment about the dad "filling out" from the stick figure depiction of himself. What's funny was, he uses the words "fattened up," which could be taken several ways. However, the following line where the main character says, "You've fattened up in a good way" put it into the possibly racy category. That's another thing that was edited. I'd tagged the line with "Sue said, blushing that she'd spoken so freely." The editors tagged it with "Sue said as he shot a wink her way, her pulse trilling as their eyes met." So, any racy tones were added in there. Also, toward the last where Carson says, "That's a load off" the editor inserted "An electric silence crackled between them." I'd said, "'That takes a weight off my mind,' Carson said. He drew closer." In the case of this story, I'd say the edits raced it up a little from my original. However, I've written others where people reading my drafts have said they had a couple of places where they sounded too racy for WW. Ah! The balance. Thanks again for comments. Hope the comments I've left here about some of the edits are helpful.
It's always interesting to see what the editors do to our stories! Thanks for the explanations, Mary!
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