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Writer In Motion: How My CPs Shaped the Third Draft
Welcome back, lovely readers! It’s week 5 of the Writer In Motion project, and boy did I have major edits to make. This week was all about critique partner feedback and applying it to the third draft of our project. This phase in the editing process is hard for me; it means trusting others to be honest and constructive. It’s difficult for me to hand my brain baby over to a stranger to be poked and prodded, but with the right people, critiques can be invaluable. I’m so glad to have shared my work this week with two kind souls: Belinda and Fariha. So, I want to dedicate this third edit to them 😘
A word of warning: This story leans heavily into the tragedy corner and deals with loss/grief; it may be too graphic for those who have recently lost a loved one. This is also Pinocchio retelling focused on a girl’s unwanted transformation from doll to human. It’s possible the story may contain elements that might trigger individuals struggling with body dysmorphia. Please read on carefully.
Chapter One:
Where Heaven Spills Its Easel
Each breath I take fills me with the blackest of water and the remains of Twilight. Air bubbles escape to the surface as I reach out, the metal rivets of my knuckles aching from the cold, inky liquid surrounding me. My wooden fingers curl around the empty space where your hand had been moments before. Before sunset bled at the edge of the world, a merigold cinder swallowed by the swelling ocean on the horizon. Before the wind turned against our sail and the sea hummed its unearthly song, drawing Charybdis to us.
It was only moments before you had hoisted me over the side of the boat and cut the tether between us with a rusted blade. Don’t move. Don’t speak. Don’t answer any calls, even if they sound like me. The sea don’t claim the dead — though I’m not alive. It’s like you forgot that point in your panic. The instructions trembled on your lips, your voice drowned out by the splintering of wood.
But beneath the roiling waves, the creature spreads like a wilting lotus, all tentacles and teeth. Jellyfish scatter in every direction, caught between threads of the dying day piercing the surface and the uncertain depths below. Fear tears through me, propels my limbs against all reason like a jolt of electricity. I gasp for air above the surface. Currents chew me up and spit me out, roaring in my ears, clawing at my hair, mimicking the way you once called my name.
Atlas, Atlas! Where are you hiding? Come out and play.
But I know once the sea takes me into its embrace, it’d never let me go. It tricks and steals. It’s a cruel and cunning creature that takes on whatever shape it must to lure us to the tomb. It has no voice of its own, so strums the vocal cords of the lost like a harp.
Lovely. Deadly.
Lyra, Lyra, Lyra. The words are carved into the back of my throat. Even now, as I desperately search the waters for a sign of you, I can’t bring myself to say your name.
I’m terrified the sea might answer back;
I’m even more terrified that you won’t.
I cling to a shredded piece of debris, the white letters of the WIND DANCER stark in the dying light. I watch, trembling, as tentacles slither around the final mast of our ship. Our home. It cracks the way bones do, gasps for breath as water rushes in. It hovers between the sea and stars, imbued with gold and nightfall and scattered memories.
I’m clutching the debris so tightly, the tips of my wooden fingers chip and chafe, but it doesn’t hurt. Nothing feels more painful than your absence than the nightmare of never finding you. It fills me with dread. I feel it in the water weighing down the fabric of my white dress, and the way it twists around my legs like a net. The burned ends of my strings are tangled in my hair, caught on the purple flowers you weaved into white strands. I whimper as the unsteady waves coax them to icy depths.
The horizon is a thin ribbon of surrender now, a smoldering tangerine light. No moon dances across the sky, no shred of hope once the curtain falls. I feel the mouth of the sea spreading open beneath me; our world, Lyra, is spilling over and out into the inky unknown. North. South. East. West. The compass in my chest is spinning in every direction.
Where are you? The words are on my tongue. They taste of salt and ashwood and rusted metal. They are heavier than the rest of me, but I can’t part with them.
All dying things cry out in vain, the puppeteer, Ianthe, had told us. They shine brightest at the door of death. It was before we sailed for Vallumoira. Before our celestial compass led us through the Ionian Sea. Before the letters came and went like paper birds in the summer. Before I learned to breathe and paint and sing.
It was before you cut my strings with clumsy, nervous fingers, and carved peonies into the wood of my body. A woodcarver’s apprentice, your small hands were kind and careful, each etching made with unwavering intent. Ianthe called it troublesome, especially for girls who couldn’t tell a compass from a thermometer.
But you called it a promise. A kind of magic that could only exist between maker and doll. We belong together, Atlas. Always and forever. I’ll make sure of it….
Except it wasn’t your promise to make.
And the sea knows, doesn’t it? Our secrets are floating in the water.
A cry breaks my lips as the mast of our home snaps, and the sail is swallowed by swelling waves and turquoise tendrils. It’s a strange and strangled sound that leaves me. It takes the strength out of my fingers and I slip from the debris, catching sight of beady red eyes rising out of the blackness with triumph.
The sea’s song dissolves into an eerie, melodious wail, and it reaches for me. The water swells until it surrounds me, but it’s you I hear; it’s you I feel closing around me in a death hold. Isn’t it?
Atlas, Atlas! Come and play.
Lyra, Lyra. Where are you?
Isn’t it?
At the world’s edge, our life bleeds from Terra Firma to Aether to Oceana. The brightest reds and golds and yellows of heaven spill into the blackest waters I breathe. Evergreen tentacles unfurl around me. Slivers of wood and shrapnel cloud the water. I cry out for you until my throat is raw, until the sound of your name is indecipherable, until I cannot tell who is alive and who is dying.
Is it me?
Is it you?
Forever and always.
The compass comes to a dead stop, and all the air leaves me as I follow the south-pointing needle. Down, down, down into the devouring depths where an uneven gate of teeth unhinges, and rises to greet me.
Notes From Critique Partners
I have a theory that Belinda and Fariha are psychically linked. Maybe they’re aliens. Maybe they’re magic. All I know is both of them were dead on when it came to calling out my purple-prosing butt.
Just a quick tip before jumping into this: I like to compile all the feedback into one word document and switch the colors to softer tones. Why? Because pastel doesn’t make my brain flip out like red, orange, or yellow. Blues, purples, faint pinks, and soft greens are soothing colors to me.
Fariha was consumed, it seems, with questions about the world. Who was Atlas? Was Lyra the puppeteer? Where were they going? Was Vallumoira a real place? Was this world similar or different from ours? Where exactly are they when the creature attacks their boat?
I loved her many questions as I read along because they prompted a closer look at the meat of this new world, its endless possibilities, and the importance of my characters within it. I enjoyed her involvement in the developmental process and her investment in the story itself. Also…the girl had some theories going on over here. I loved it:
Belinda was a pro at finding all those contradicting finer details. She didn’t shy away from politely telling me to stop blinding readers with bombs of color 😂 It was great, actually. It’s like she was voicing what my initial gut had warned me: I focused too much on the various hues of the sunset reflecting on the water. Though pretty, the setting stifled the urgency of the moment. She caught contradicting passages, such as the “first breath” Atlas took, which conflicted with a later recollection of Atlas having learned to breathe long before the shipwreck. These are two lines that occupy opposite ends of the story and she found them. It was one of those moments:
She gave amazing suggestions for tightening certain passages and pointed to moments in the story that spoke to her as examples of how to make the story as a whole more impactful. I loved her attention to detail and her sweet delivery of encouraging comments. It really goes a long way when a CP can be both constructive and kind.
Feedback applied: Fewer color bombs. Dialed down layered figurative cluster-fudges. Shortened complicated sentences. Reworded awkward sentences. Reworked the first line, which conflicted with following lines. Place hints about Atlas’s form in the second line. Turned focus to the special bond between Lyra and Atlas. Added backstory/history.
Revelations: Lyra may not be the one who created Atlas. How does this affect the promise Lyra made to Atlas? Ianthe is the puppeteer and Lyra is a woodcarver’s apprentice. These roles are not the same. Atlas might be a doll. Location of the wreck being near the Strait of Messina and off the coast of Italy. Implied: Lyra is older than Atlas. Lyra might be dead.
Other Writer In Motion Third Drafts
Curious about the other Writer In Motion participants? Look no further!
K. J. Harrowick (Blog 1 & Blog 2) | Jen Karner | H.M. Braverman | J.M. Jinks | Melissa Bergum | Thuy Nguyen | Kristen Howe | Kathryn Hewitt | Sean Willson | Paulette Wiles | Ellen Mulholland | Sheri MacIntyre | Jessica Lewis | Susan Burdorf | Stephanie Whitaker | Dawn Currie | Megan Van Dyke | SKaeth | Fariha Khayyam | M. Dalto | Sheryl Stein | Belinda Grant | Coffee Quills
