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Group A Stories October 2020

Stories for the Fall 2020 Feedback Sessions

Group A

To avoid emailing stories back and forth, please upload on this page the story you wish to discuss this month.

Post your stories a minimum of one week in advance of the feedback session. Those seven days give you and your buddies time to read and provide helpful feedback on each others’ stories.

Instructions:

  1. Share your story in the comments section on this page. You can either copy and paste the text of your story in the comment box or click the paperclip icon to attach a PDF of your work. Note: it must be a PDF; Word documents are not accepted on the comment app.
  2. Print a copy of the Story Review Form (below) for each story your buddies share here.
  3. Read each story a couple of times.
  4. Complete the Story Review Form after your readings to organize your thoughts, suggestions, and questions.
  5. During the live Feedback meeting, you will share with your buddy what you wrote on the form, as well as anything new upon hearing their story read aloud.
  6. Email a copy of your completed Story Review Form to each buddy so they can keep a record of comments and suggestions related to their story.

If there are specific questions you’d like answered, or if you want your buddies to concentrate more heavily on a certain story device, e.g., dialogue, opening, title, etc., please include those requests in the comments when you attach your story. Ask for what you need to help you make your story the best it can be.

The Feedback Guidelines are available below to provide the framework of how Life Writers approaches giving and receiving feedback on written work, both via posts on the website and during feedback sessions.

Feedback Sessions

10/27 @ 6pm EDT

11/17 @ 6pm EDT

12/29 @ 6pm EDT

Need help with how to give and receive feedback?

If you’re new to giving and receiving feedback on written work, or you’d like a refresher, watch our video tutorial for a better understanding of the process.

12 Comments

  • Deborah Hunt Repp
    Posted November 12, 2020 at 11:23 am

    This is a very short story in my series of vignettes which will be making up segments of my memoires. I’ll try to post this to practice. I would appreciate comments. I do plan to expand and add to the complexity of this story. I looks like the pdf is attached.–Success! Deborah

    • Norma Beasley
      Posted November 15, 2020 at 11:19 am

      Debbie, wonderful descriptions, delightful presentation…I enjoyed your story immensely! I’m still not sure I understand the famous phrase…”That we have.” What does it mean?

    • Ada Miller
      Posted November 17, 2020 at 12:19 pm

      Love the story. Suggestions: they blossom TO; she wore….black pumps. Her spindly….waist over which she wore…..; she showed a flip side of her personality.; episode description is excellent, I can visualize the whole thing. After pivot right. Put in the great sentence “her stomping scared…” finish paragraph is very good. I liked it and think this reads better.

  • Deborah Hunt Repp
    Posted November 17, 2020 at 3:49 pm

    This beginning page regards my early career, leading up to a 25-year career in NYC business as a secretary.

  • Ada Miller
    Posted November 17, 2020 at 4:24 pm

    I have lived in Orlando, Florida my entire life with the exception of the WWII years. Born in Orlando April 28, 1940, the life of every citizen was about to change. One of my most memorable pictures is my one year old picture, running with arms outstretched. We were living at 548 Lake Street and had a fish pond in our back yard. Aunt Jo and Uncle Wiley lived next door with my grandfather Jack Robbins. December 6, 1941 changed our lives when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the USA entered the war on two fronts, Europe and Asia. My father could not enlist due to serious kidney illness. He sold insurance at the time for Mutual of Omaha and began travels to Atlanta, Savanah, and Beaufort, S. Carolina. A first memory is riding in a stroller in Atlanta, on a side walk with a wall next to the sidewalk. Cecil is pushing the stroller. That is all I remember about Atlanta, but next we moved to Savanah, Ga. where there was a large army base for training. My father’s brother Sylvester and Aunt Sybil had secured a house in a very tight rental market and we moved in. Many memories of this home. My tricycle was stolen off the front porch, older boys made a ride using an eight foot board with skates attached underneath and back braces nailed on somehow. Three or four of us could sit on the board and someone pushed from behind. Have no idea how it was steered but I remember the fun of riding down the street. Another memory is rolling a jar of cream on the floor between Aunt Sybil and I to make butter. Last December at Sybil’s 100 th birthday party, I told that story. In a few months, we moved the short distance to Beaufort where there was a huge marine base, Parris Island. The home we lived in was on the Main Street into downtown and on a bluff overlooking the river. Many memories abound from these years. One day a pretty young woman knocked on the door and asked mother if she had a vacant bedroom to rent. This was Marie and her young husband Dale was a dentist and assigned to Paris Island. There was no place for them to rent and they wanted to be together. They moved in. Not long after, another couple rented the only other vacant bedroom. Then Izzy and ? Moved into the basement. I can remember the cute curtains she made for the little basement windows and the hams my father had bought from farmers out in the country hanging from the ceiling. Can’t remember where the bed was. These were war years with rations and scarcity. Lots of tomatoes were grown around Beaufort and there was a cannery attached to high school property. I went with mother and we canned a lot of tomatoes and brought them home. When I was four, I had pneumonia. This was a fatal
    disease at the time and I was a frail child from stories told. Taken to the hospital my parents were told there was only a slim chance of survival. They offered the only hope and that was a new drug being tried, penicillin! It had been tried on the troops with good success. It was given to me and I lived. I had been in an oxygen tent and all that. Memorabilia from this time is a small China piggy bank given to me for my forth birthday. One night, our home dwellers had a large party and they asked me to bring them my bank which they passed around and filled with change. I was so happy that I entertained by singing a song or two. I was always singing, so my father nicknamed me Sing Song for a character in Dick Tracy comic strip. I was five years old in April 1945 and the war ended in Europe. We moved back to Orlando and I started first grade. Do not remember kindergarten so think I never attended.

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