A Writer Names Nathan Hines Gets a Little "Swimmy"
This is Nathan Hines photographed at the very moment of a nuclear detonation. Thus the light. Married and expecting a child with his lovely wife, Chu-Yun Wei, Nathan (known throughout the world as "Hinesy") lives in Taiwan, teaches English (and whatever else he can think of) to the unwitting Taiwanese, writes novels, screenplays, and now he can add Descriptions of Lakes to his writing resume. On this, the 8th day of March, 2006, he gives us the 2nd entry in this month's Literary Smackdown, a longish piece the author calls, albeit reluctantly, "swimmy". He may have just called it that because he needed something to name the file, but there it is anyway. Swimmy. Get your smackdown on readers.
Swimmy
by Nathan Hines
My face looks all swimmy in the water. But that’s just because I dropped a pebble in a second ago. It was smooth as a mirror, before. The rest of the lake still is. Smooth, quiet and glistening. The morning air is crisp and full of dew. So much so, that my nostrils actually feel moist after I suck in a lungful. I guess you could say it smells “clean” but to me it just smells like nothing. Fuck, I hate the country.
The trees on the opposite shore are in that awkward in-between stage. They’re turning towards autumn but it’s not the explosions of yellows, browns and purples that you see in postcards yet. They won’t be snapping those photos for another few weeks. Just now they’re still green with growing patches of brown that just make them seem mud spattered and dirty. They don’t look too far away, actually. I wonder if I could swim it.
Without taking my eyes off of the tree line in the distance, I squat down and let my fingers fumble around until they find a nice sized rock. The perfect throwing rock is just a little bigger than a golf ball. If you can get it, egg-shaped is always nice because it fits so well between your thumb and forefingers. The one I found is just such a rock. Smooth. Small but heavy. A good lake rock. I stand up, pull back and hurl it as far as I can. As I let go, I expect it will get pretty close to the middle.
It doesn’t. Not even a tenth. Maybe a not twentieth. Anyway, a fraction too small to bother figuring out. Those must be some big fucking trees on the other side of this lake, because they don’t look that far away. It looks like you could doggie paddle to the other side in ten minutes but it’d probably more than an hour.
A ring of ripples is radiating outwards from where the rock had landed with a “KER-PLUMP”. Perfect circles expanding, one after the other.
A couple of purple cloud wisps are floating slowly by overhead, so there must be a breeze. I don’t feel shit though. This air is just sitting on me like a blanket. My hands are damp and I try to wipe them off on my jeans, but it doesn’t do any good because they’re damp too. Everything is. Morning dew always gets mixed in with images of clean healthy livin’, and it looks real good on TV and all, but in person it just makes me wish I had a towel. Not that it would do much good. The towel would probably be damp too.
The ring of ripples is still growing. The outer ring looks like it would be pushing past the sidelines of a football field by now. All from one little pebble. It looks like someone has drawn a big target on the middle of the lake. I throw another rock out and break the image up.
I hear something. Not a bird or frog or some fucking fish making a splash. Something. It sounds like a helicopter, but softer. And lower. Lower to the ground, I mean. The sound, would actually be higher, I guess. Pitch-wise.
A small boat comes puttering around the bend of the lake. It’s one of those little flat boats with no motor in the back. Just a dinky little thing in the front that pulls it along at like, 2 miles per hour. There’s an old man sitting in it. Really, he could be 30. I can’t tell because he’s so far out, but he’s looking at me. Either me or something directly behind me, and there’s NOTHING behind me except a bunch of trees. And they look exactly like every other tree on the lake so I can’t think of what else he would be looking at. And the old (or maybe young) fucker just keeps on looking at me a long, long time.
Finally he waves and after a few minutes, he’s puttered his way around the next bend and disappears from sight. A couple of minutes after that, the sound is gone completely and I’m sitting, again, in tomblike silence. All this suffocating space and empty, tasteless air.
I look down at the water at my feet. It’s calm again. Clear and smooth and there I am looking back up at me. Quickly a tap my foot on the reflection and, immediately, my face looks all swimmy again.
posted by Miller Sturtevant | 1:19 PM
12 Comments:
Looks like I'll be first to take a crack at this. Nate-dawg, I liked this a lot. I think I really enjoy that you don't try to paint a picture of a murder using the lake as a metaphor. In fact, you could just as easily see this to be any man on the side of a lake making observations. There's no hint of a murder anywhere, and therefore I think it succeeds in a big way.
I had a problem with this character's voice. He seemed like a boring man with nothing to really say in his observations. He notes the trees changing color, he notes the ripples in the water, and so on without really adding to the reason of 'why' his observations are so. This isn't a big deal, if you ask me, because I know this exercise is really tough.
I think I started enjoying this man's observations more once he got into the air laying on him like a blanket and the air all around being damp. That was fun, and it would have been a really nice place to probably start the story, maybe? Don't know. Anyhow, yeah, good stuff, nonetheless. And, for the record, you're right, the towel would've been damp, dammit! And it's good pacing on this, because our brains are revealing to us in step with his train of thought, and when he wishes for a towel, so do we. And when he curses the notion of it being wet, we think of it at that moment, too. Good writing.
This is a minor critique, but I feel it bears mentioning. This kind of goes back to this character's voice. We see he's not a fan of nature, or at least he doesn't have an appreciation of it, which is obvious when he blantantly comes out with 'Fuck, I hate the country'. Yeah, that's a telltale sign if ever I'd seen one. But, when he picks up the rock, he mentions that it's a good lake rock. I'm not saying this man cannot have an appreciation of a 'good lake rock' and still 'hate the country', but somehow it made his voice seem to inconsistent.
Anyone else have a problem with that?
I kind of hate grading based soley on my opinion, but I know that's part of the smackdown way. So, here's your final score:
7
This blog was fun while it lasted. YAY! WOOOHHHOOO!!
Good times over.
And.... scene
Premature much, guys? This blog's only supposed to get going when an entry is posted, and then at the end of the month when the judging happens. At least that's how it's supposed to work. I'm just about done with mine, so expect it soon. We need more people to enter. This month's "challenge" is too short not to do. So Shawn, BOC, Abe, anyone else, write a paragraph. It doesn't have to be a story like Hinesy and Heath's overachieving asses, just a paragraph, a long sentence or two will do on the low end.
Nathan,
First - I thought your wife's name was Teri? What's this Chu-yun wei bullshit? She too good for her American name? And to think, you have a friend in Iraq...the shame he must feel. Wow.
Anyway, I dug the story and agree with Heath that it really picks up towards the end but the result of this is that it creates a few inconsistencies of voice. I didn't even pick up on the love/hate country part, but I did notice that the guy seemed at times to me both a child and an adult, southern and not-southern.
The most obvious example of the child/adult thing is the use of the word "swimmy." I read that first sentence and I thought your narrator was a kid. And then throwing pebbles in a lake felt childish as well. It wasn't later until the cussing set in that I started to view him differently.
As for the Southern thing, I didn't pick up on any regionality until you used the word "livin'" in the 6th graph. That's anal, I know, but it makes it harder for the reader to define your narrator.
Other than that it blew my balls off.
Score: 6.77
Overall, I think it’s good. I like the stuff in paragraph four which has him throwing the rock into the water. I like how it doesn’t go near as far as he expects it, too, and how this effects his thinking about how long it would take to swim across. This struck me as a real, authentic line of thought, one I hadn’t read before. But then, later in the story, (just to quibble) you say it’s as though someone drew a big target in the middle of the lake, but earlier you write he’d thrown the stone, at most, a 20th of the way across the lake, not the middle of the lake. Wouldn’t it look like the top half of a target drawn on the surface of the lake? I’m not trying to “nail ya” as Colbert says, but these are little things that can erode reader confidence in the writer, and they’re fun to point out.
Maybe my main issue with this entry is that, without knowing what the exercise is, would it be possible for a reader to suss out the fact that this guy just killed somone? For me this kind of subtlety was the real challenge of the exercise. Because I knew the facts behind the exercise (he’s just killed someone), I was worried when the guy comes puttering along on his little boat. In my mind I wondered, “Is the guy going to kill the man in the boat? Is the guy on the boat seeing some incriminating bit of evidence we haven’t been shown yet?) But had I not known the facts behind the exercise, I’m not sure there are enough clues in the rest of the story to convey that there’s something “off” about what’s happening. So, I give it a 6.6.
Wow. I'm really impressed with your writing. First off, I love it when writers coin new words that I want to use, like 'swimmy.' Is that even a real word? I don't think so, but it's a great adjective. You really bring the reader into the surroundings. I picture perfectly the egg-shaped rock. And it's very easy to identify with the character. His rock falls short. That happens to everyone...The whole dampness part and how the country looks better than it is - the grass is always greener. I feel like this is a great intro into a longer story. You've set up this guy's angst in his situation (especially when the man in the boat arrives). He's unhappy and listless and feels dead inside. I don't, however, have any clue that this guy has just killed somebody or even done anything wrong. Now, contrary to the nice little intro you wrote for me, I haven't actually killed anyone and it could be that once you have, you see the world just as you saw it before. I don't know. That's why I feel like it's a good intro, but I want more story to accomplish the objective.
Now see, I disagree about the 'good lake rock.' Perhaps he grew up in the country and loved it at one time (therein the good lake rock) and now, due to his recent killing spree, feels stuck in his current surroundings and hates the country for reasons yet undisclosed. I think the good lake rock actually brings a deeper layer to his character. Perhaps this boring guy, which his fuck-all attitude, has an appreciation for life that's being smothered by his emotions.
Final vote: 8
what the christ@!
that's a story not a description.
you get a 5....score might go up if i get all the way through it.
Abe posted this up under my entry, thought I'd put it up where it belongs.
"Abe said...
Nathan
Things I liked:
-I like his hate or mistrust or what ever he has for the boat dude. Very subtle hint about the murder. I can dig it.
-The story comes full circle. Swimmy to swimmy. Reminds us that he is troubled by who he is or who he has become.
-Seems to show that the character is disgusted with himself by having him damage his image in the water.
-You really do describe the lake and avoid the murder. Way to stick to the assignment.
-The description of the dampness. Damn I hate that shit. Dew is the Devils work.
Things I liked a little less:
-A description of how we perceive our reflection can be such a strong metaphor for how we think others see us and how we feel about what we have become. I know that this was not in the assignment but you really were poised to go this route and I was disappointed when you didn’t take it this direction. I wanted to know more about this man.
- I kind of agree with Heath about the rock. This sounds like someone that embraces the lake and the outdoors, not someone that hates it.
-I didn’t like the 10th 20th reference when you were describing the skipping rock. I have no idea why but it just seemed overly analytical. I wish I could explain this more.
-As much as I tried, I could only hear your voice when I was reading this. I have the same problem when I try to write in the first person. I write as though the character is somewhat well read and when I try to throw in slang or anything that is foreign to me it is hard to pull off.
-I felt like you drifted back and forth between first and third person point of view.
- You really do describe the lake and avoid the murder. Way to stick to the assignment. Although this is also in the likes section of my review, I kind of wish you had broken the rules.
-Although it fit well in this story (I don’t know if I should put this in the likes or dislikes column) I hate the word swimmy. It was like nails on a chalk board. If I ever hear that you have been using that word again, I will hunt you down and drown you in a vat of melted processed cheese while I smash thousands of gigantic crunchy cockroaches with my combat boots. Do we have an understanding mister?
Summary:
Nate I liked the story and wanted it to be longer. You made me want to know more about the guy and his inner demons. Again I think you did not really find the characters voice and that bothered me.
6.75 "
I really like the boat part. It gave a great sense of paranoia. I was wondering about the murderer. If he hates the country, why is he there? Does he just go out there every now and then to kill people, and then returns to the city? That's probably neither here nor there though.
Unfortunately, I have to take off points for the name "swimmy". Seeing the name, I thought I was going to read a children's book about where babies come from.
5.6
six and a half
Nathan,
I enjoyed your story. I really liked that you paid attention to the outward growing circles as an illusion to the greater effect an action can have. This was a wonderful image for how something can get out of control quickly. But I wanted more from that section, more details. It's a great way to fit that pride/worry/regret/elation that your character is feeling after having killed someone.
Which brings me to, how does he feel about killing someone? Other than paranoid, which I learned in the encounter with the boater. That encounter is nicely done. You lingered on it longer than I expected to the point I was worried your character may harm him too.
I also had tonal issues with your work. It seemed like a younger character at first, then an older city dweller, then someone knowledge of the forest that comes from repeated visits. Certainly these could all be true, but I didn't feel there was explaination enough to accept them all as truths.
Rating: 5.8
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