June 10th & 17th, 2019 - Javi

Dear TNY,

So we’ve got this story called “Javi”, right?

God, this is one of those stories that breaks your heart the wrong kind of way.  Because the story, on the page, doesn’t break your heart as a reader.  The story that this story could have been breaks my heart as a writer.  And it feels like it’s so obvious that I cannot comprehend how you could have missed this, TNY.  Other than that whole head-in-ass disease you have going on.

What’s going right with this story?  It’s clean.  It’s mostly scene.  The voice is terse.  Matter-of-fact.  It moves with force and does so without flowery bullshit.  It’s plain and easy and reminiscent of stories from 50 years ago that cast aside the notion that writers were writerly & needed to be noticed and instead embraced the idea that writers should be invisible.  I took no notes in this reading and felt engaged almost the entire time.

What’s not going right?  It’s too fucking long.  Although I was engaged throughout, I was definitely looking for that last page at a point.  Note that I was still engaged. 

And why was this too long?  Yes, let’s get to my real beef with this story.  It’s about the wrong people.  The relationship between Javi and the painter is interesting.  Very fucking interesting.  Totally engaging.  So much so that the other shit that happens with the mother and LA is a total fucking turnoff.  Like, why does the author give us this beautiful relationship between these two people, Javi and the painter, and then throw it out the window to handle some other relationship that we are all going to care less about because the first one was so much more interesting?  I don’t understand.  Why was this story too long? Rhetorical.  Because it was trying to tell two stories at the same time and the one that mattered was the first story and not the second.  That’s beyond frustrating.  Because if the author just focused on the first story, it could have been fucking grand.  GRAND.  But no.  The author turned away from the story and went somewhere else (both geographically and emotionally) and left me hanging.  Goddamn it, TNY.  Why didn’t you pick this up?  This would have been an easy win.  Now, as per usual, it’s apparent to the fit reader that you don’t know what the fuck you are doing.

Alas, not surprised.

Nick