BRIGIT'S FLAME WEEK 1 ENTRY- SEPT - MUD
What’s In a Name?
“Mudunique!”
Oh, how she hated the name.
The horribly constructed monstrosity of an excuse for a girl’s name, had to be the worst name ever.
Or at the very least, if not number one on the list, surely it would be one of the top ten worst in the whole world.
How could a person with even the least bit of God given sense name their ( Read more... )
“Your mama--she had big dreams and losing them-well, that right out killed her spirit, and that’s why she got mixed up with [I can’t recall anyone, much less anyone like this character referring to it as =that heroin.”]
Oh, Mudunique sighed inwardly. Here we go…[give us something a little less obvious here]
They shared a smile at the understatement [delete=and the humor in it.]
Truth be told, Mud thought of [unnecessarily specific detail=the eighty year old] as her mother.
[delete=A lot of] questions [delete=to ask] flew through her head like a flock of low flying pigeons [,]-- but the one that rushed like the wind out of her mouth was, “Why did she name me Mudunique?”
Mud let tears flood over and spill down her cheeks and she looked up to see her grandma was crying too. They both laughed at the other’s sentimental nature[. A]nd she got up to hug the tiny woman. The tight squeeze earned her a swat to the butt and [her?] old woman screwed up her face and asked, “So Mudunique-what are you doin with those boys out there? Cuz your mom, even if she ain’t here, is expect[ed/ing?] you to do great things in this world.”
“Mudunique.” She said the name with confidence[-]as if formally introducing herself to the world. [And] for the first time ever, the name didn’t feel like a ten ton weight pinning her to the ground. Instead, it felt like two wings on either side of her-lifting her spirit high up over the fenced[-]in yard [. A]nd into the land of possibilities and wonders.
Then she remembered something.
It was one of those perfectly timed ‘more than coincidence’-coincidences. Earlier that day in school, her literature class had been studying 'Romeo and Juliet'. The question their teacher had wrote on the blackboard for group discussion was-- “What’s In a Name?”
She had cringed at the sight of the hand-written scrawl on the blackboard and felt like disappearing underneath her desk or becoming invisible, whichever one was the quickest exit out. Mud was nearly panicked over the thought of having to look at the snickering faces of the other kids in the class while she tried to defend [try something less excessive here=the disjointed letters of the alphabet that had been jumbled together as a tag for her.]
Her terrified expression must have made her favorite teacher skip over her and luckily the bell had rung before she’d [had] been called upon.
If [on] tomorrow though, her teacher did ask her to address the topic, Mud certainly would have a few things to say.
She would suggest[,] that maybe a name was more than the sum of its parts[…]or the way it rolled off the tongue or the way it reverberated in the human ear.
Maybe the true test of a name was in it’s power to inspire[…] to acknowledge your presence in the world[. A]nd to connect us to something bigger than ourselves. A name[,] could tell the story of person’s past and [their] future…and carry the love and hope of former generations into the brand new day.
The true [sp=dinstinction] of a name was all about the intention of the heart that made it - the one that created it .
"Mud-u-nique," she said the name out loud again[. L]istening to the character of each syllable.
[A]nd for the first time ever she felt like it belonged to her and she to it.
It covered her[…]told the world who she was and what she was going to be.
Her chest swelled with pride[ for it].
[Some basic, middle-school level grammar rules can be broken here and there, but here it seems they’re either ignored or unknown. Punctuation that might work in dialogue also doesn’t always work in reflective narration. Catching a spelling error suggests that you either didn’t have or didn’t use a spell check function and it’s kind of the least you can do with today’s technology. The short, choppy style isn’t a bad way to tell this story, but you still need to proofread this one a bit more to make sure it seems simple rather than rushed.]
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I think that perhaps until I'm a stronger writer, I'll opt out of selecting tough edits. It's very hard to focus on a lesson when the ego is so distracted by the criticism received. This is my issue.
I also I do use spell check. I will absolutely be more careful the next time I make last minute revisions.
I do thank you for all the time you put into this edit. And for the lesson you did teach me. Yep, I really do.
Best of luck to you in the rest of the September contest.
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