Guys would you please have a read?

[grtduff10]

If you would ever so kindly please have a quick read, that would be much appreciated.

Does it make you want to carry on reading?

As I sat there on the itching fabric that was rubbing against my tight's; feeling the bumps as we raced on the tracks, I stared out of the tainted window and thought to my self rather flippantly. “This tunnel represents my life, I’m just going through a long dark gloomy patch. It will end soon”.

I scoffed loudly at the thought of me trying to reassure my self, I sat there and waited but oddly the tunnel just wouldn’t end. I kept waiting and waiting to get out of this tunnel; but it carried on, my heart began to race, I felt my body begin to boil up, my chest was becoming tight and I could feel the air in my throat getting trapped, I couldn’t breathe.

Out of nowhere I blurted out “Its never going to end is it The thought kept running through my head, I'm just going through my life just like this tunnel just existing, just waiting, and waiting. My heart was racing even faster and I felt as if the cabin was getting smaller and smaller. I kept staring out of the window fixated on the tiny spec of dried food that looked as though it had been there for years. I can’t go through my life like that. What am I meant to do? I need her out of my life.

With that thought suddenly the train exited the tunnel and the bright beaming sunlight bounced off the window and made me shield my eyes. My heart began to slow, my eye's quickly left the dried bit of food on the window. I felt a rush of cool air around me. Looking around everyone was blurry but then after a few seconds, my eyes adapted.

No one had noticed my slight panic attack. While I felt like my whole world was falling apart. Everyone else was going about their daily lives. They all looked contempt, reading their papers. Sipping their coffee, I thought why isn’t my life like that. Just simple.

After I composed my self I looked out of the window at the bright blue sky and saw birds sweeping and swaying. Looking at the bird's swaying so freely it made me feel..well simple. I felt so peaceful and at that, I knew what I needed to do.

Is it unusual for a woman to have eight children n 2002? I know family three family's who have the same amount, and they both have only one gender on each h side.

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Yes, very unusual and expensive! But it's less the fact itself I mean, you can make unusual things seem normal in fiction, with work -- than that the birth of an eighth child isn't the source of teasing/banter among a bunch of male drinking buddies wetting the baby's head in a pub.

I'm not trying to be rude but that 2nd extract with some kind of country dialect is very amateurish. The accent is all over the place and comes across as someone trying to write in a dialect she's never heard before.

And where are you based that you don't think it's unusual to have 8 children less than 20 years ago?

Something's not adding up here.

That's actually the way myself and my family speak, it's the way the people in my home town speak. The second extract is very personal, and come from true events. Including the accents and the children. I even just said to my husband that people believe that in a time such as 2002 people didn't have loads of kids. He said people had more kids back then than they do know.

Which I believe, I know loads of families who have loads of kids from that time. I myself have 7 uncles and 1 aunt on one side. And five aunts and one uncle on the otherZ

My husband is near enough the same.

That whole scene feels utterly unrealistic and old-fashioned for 2002. Would four working-class men really be celebrating the Jubilee like that? And surely the guy with 8 children would be at home looking after the 7 older ones!

But 2002 is only 16 years ago! If you are a grown-up now then presumably your aunts and uncles are at least in their 40s and 50s, so born in the 1970s at latest?

in a time such as 2002 people didn't have loads of kids. He said people had more kids back then than they do know

Perhaps I'm getting old, but 2002 wasn't that long ago. The main differences between 2002 and now are the advances in technology and the growth of social media that have taken place in the last 16 years. But it was hardly another era!

Op, your spelling and grammar is perfect now! Your last couple of posts are error free! Well done you!

Where is your home town OP?

I s English your first language?

I even just said to my husband that people believe that in a time such as 2002 people didn't have loads of kids. He said people had more kids back then than they do know.

OP, are you confusing 2002 with 1902 or something? It's 16 years ago! If you google '2002 UK birthrate', you'll see the average figure was 1.63 births per woman -- it's not that some people didn't have eight children, it's that it would have been quite unusual. Surely if you are old enough to be posting on Mn, your uncles and aunts weren't being born around 2002 but a generation or more earlier? My MIL is one of 13 siblings, but she was born just after WWII, and I was at school with children from large-ish families, but I was born in the early 70s in a country with a historically higher birthrate than the UK, and eight still wouldn't have been run of the mill.

I genuinely thought as I was reading it that maybe it was Queen Victoria's jubilee being celebrated.

And you may well speak like that, but that's not what people are saying -- it's that effective dialogue on the page can't be a verbatim transcription of the way people really speak, and no reader is going to puzzle through phonetic transcriptions of a dialect.

In the nicest possible way, it doesn't matter what really happened -- if you are writing fiction, it needs to work purely as a story, and if your reader is scratching his/her head over the unremarkableness of eight children or phonetic dialect, they'll just stop reading...

Swanhild, in the nicest possible way, I think op is taking the Michael.

Must be!

Okay this is real for starters, maybe when I have finished the book I can come back and let you all have a read then. Thank you all for your responses, have a wonderful day.

Hi @grtduff10 I happened upon your post and was wondering how you're getting on?

Reading through your work and earlier posts it occurred to me that perhaps you are from a traveller family? That might explain lots of children being the norm in your circles.

I think you have a natural way of writing and hope you carry on. It's great that you recognise that spelling and grammar are not your strong points and have an editor to help fix those aspects of your writing.

But the stories you have to tell don't need anything other than your unique voice. Please do come back and tell us where to find your published works.

Too wordy I think