[stylist] Writing sample: The heart of it, chapter 1.

Mon Jul 9 02:05:35 UTC 2012

I do wonder how realistic it is to have characters trading hearts?  Fiction involves the suspension of disbelief, but there may be limits.  I personally believe in miracles, but this is more of a medical question than a miracle.
Lori

-----Original Message-----
From: Alan <awheeler1965 at gmail.com>
To: 'Writer's Division Mailing List' <stylist at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Sun, Jul 1, 2012 5:09 pm
Subject: Re: [stylist] Writing sample: The heart of it, chapter 1.

Jacqueline,
If you want to take a paddle to Michael and Anna, then I've done my job, at
least in part.

Thank you for your observations.

Alan

"You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until
they rest in you." - St. Augustine

Psalms 33:3 Psalms 150:5

Alan Wheeler
Sheboygan, Wisconsin 
awheeler1965 at gmail.com
http://twitter.com/#!/Country_Storm

-----Original Message-----
From: stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of Jacqueline Williams
Sent: Sunday, July 01, 2012 1:10 PM
To: 'Writer's Division Mailing List'
Subject: Re: [stylist] Writing sample: The heart of it, chapter 1.

Allen,
I really like your working title, "The Heart of It."
Your story is absorbing, but makes me want to take a hefty paddle to each of
the person's behinds to wake them up.

The premise of your story is an interesting one, and should fascinate those
with a spiritual side than can accept miracles. You asked if we thought it
publishable. I think the answer is yes, because people always want answers
such as you propose, and your writing is good. You build tension, your
characters are well-defined, and you have provided an emergency early in the
story. 
Again, your title and the plot picture make one want to read on.
I am not a fiction writer, so I am not sure how to critique fiction. Only
that I am interested in "the rest of the story."
Jacqueline Williams 

-----Original Message-----
From: stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of Alan
Sent: Wednesday, June 27, 2012 8:20 PM
To: 'Writer's Division Mailing List'
Subject: [stylist] Writing sample: The heart of it, chapter 1.

Hi everyone,
I know I posted this before, but since that time, I have added a third
chapter. I would like some critique of it and see if it has good potential
for publishing when I finish it.

The working title I have is "The Heart Of It", and here's the premise:

Michael and Anna are busy traveling the world as part of faith-based
missions. They're married, but their marriage isn't perfect. They arem't
headed for divorce, but there's as much, if not more, tension as there love
between them.

They contract a mysterious disease that creates a heart problem that can
only be cured with a transplant. The baffling twist is that they can only
receive each others hearts and hope to live. The transplant takes place, but
with a sudden, mystical side-effect: Michael and Anna suddenly have insight
into each other, opening the door for deep personal exploration, as well as
resolution and healing.

With that said, here's chapter one:

The heart of it
By: Alan Wheeler

chapter one
Heart Break

BUMP!!
Michael looked up from his section of the Sunday Chicago Sun Times as he and
Anna sat in the front of the first class section of the airplane. The jolt
of turbulence brought Michael back to his distracted thoughts. He and Anna
weren't moving, no real "turbulence" for them,  they were stagnating,
standing still, and it drove him mad.

Oh, they loved each other, that wasn't the problem.  It was communicating;
communicating their love for each other to each other, communicating without
putting the other on the defensive all the time.  Those were the problem
areas for them.  They both knew it.  Yet, neither Michael or Anna took steps
to remedy the problem.  It had become akin to that proverbial elephant in
the living room that no one speaks of, but rather walks a wide circle
around, simply to avoid it.

Michael had hoped their trip to South America would nudge them out of this
routine, cause them to break down barriers, but it didn't happen that way.
No change occurred at all, in fact.

He looked over at her as she read her Nicholas Sparks novel, and his heart
seemed to stutter in his chest, as if beating every other beat.  He loved
her so much, and yet felt so far away.  It hurt him; hurt him deeply.  He
caught her looking at him out of the corner of her eye, and the look on her
face told him in no uncertain terms she was thinking about the very same
things.  He saw the love in her eyes, but he also saw a seemingly bottomless
sadness and loneliness there, too.

He wanted to throw down his newspaper, tell her just how unreservedly he
loved her and demand she say what she was thinking.  It was futile.  It was
futile because Michael knew that he would balk if she made the same demand
of him.  She was no magazine model, no cover girl, but that didn't matter to
Michael.  Anna's inner beauty, her sense of happiness and peace manifested
itself in her glowing skin, bright smile, lush black hair and made her
outshine any model on any magazine. He had tried to open up, tried to get
past the barriers he felt between them. To Michael it was like body-slamming
a brick wall. 

All he could bring himself to do was brush a lock of her long, black hair
out of her  soft slightly rounded face.  It was a gesture of affection, to
him, anyway, but she just vaguely glanced at him out of the corner of her
eye, and continued to read.  

***

Anna felt Michael's lightly callused hand brush the loose lock of hair.  She
really did love him.  He was like no man she had ever known, let alone
loved.  Even now, looking at him made her heart stop for a moment, her
breath silently hitching.  So many female friends of hers had commented on
how, if his reddish hair was just a slightly different color, he could pass
for Brad Pitt.  He, of course, had laughed this off. Brad Pitt wasn't thick
around the middle was Michael's argument. He also didn't have brown hair.
Anna always thought that Michael could put any matinee idol to shame,
especially Brad Pitt.  That is how much she loved him, inside and out.
Yet, for her it seemed like her head was extroverted and her heart
introverted. She could talk with him about their work in South America, the
impact that work would have back in the states, and do so for hours.  

On the other hand, ask her to express her love for him, and it as if she
were pathologically shy, or mute.

Ask her to talk about some way, big or small in which Michael may have hurt
her, even just with a unintended sleight, and her emotional throat closed up
and her voice was silent.

She hated herself for it but she kept waiting on Michael to be the one to
open up. She knew she should take the first step since it seemed Michael
never would.  Unfortunately, she seemed too mired in it all to take that
step.  She recalled how she once thought being a better housewife would tilt
the balance, and cause them to open up to each other.  But, it was like the
lyric she had heard in a song by the band Wilco says, "keeping things clean
doesn't change anything."

They both had found a job that was tied to their deepest compassion for
people in need.  It fed people in the remotest villages in South America,
and shamed the United States government, what with the current
administration making rhetoric-filled promises to help these villages
devistated by bad weather starvation and disease.  The organization they
worked for did more in one week than the U.S. did in a four-year
presidential term. They both loved watching the other work.  Anna often just
sat and adored Michael as he did various handyman chores around the village.
Michael caught himself pausing, quite often, in his work to admire Anna from
afar as she sat under a tree, teaching children from the village how to read
English. For both of them, the key word was "afar." They were like two
islands that depended on each other with no bridge between them, and no open
shipping lanes.
They both sat, mutely gazing at each other. They both knew something had to
break, and both silently wondered if it ever would.

***

abruptly, for Michael, something did.  It had nothing whatsoever to do with
their relationship.  It was pain, starting from the left side of his chest
and slowly radiating down his arm.  For the love of everything holy, was he
having a heart attack?  Here?  On this airplane?  He squeezed Anna's small,
silky hand, almost violently.  His eyes registered her shock and horror as
she realized something was wrong, then everything faded to black. 

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m

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