- Post of the Week #7
- Previous Winners : Feed
March 5th, 2007
Acerbia: Legacy.
The day he died was like letting out a breath you have held in so long that the taste in your mouth has gone stale. Your eyes are half closed and your lungs squeeze. You expel the air like an evil spirit and as the muscles ache the feeling is like cramp inside. You realise this is how it feels to be empty inside; the next breath won’t fill you up again. Nothing will, not for a long time, not until you adjust to the loss.
Our judges said:
“Beautiful, moving and intimate.”
13 Comments to “Post of the Week #7”
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Just Beautiful!
I haven’t cried in ages,my tears are of similar memories. This was so beautifully written. Thank You.
Yay, I knew that one would win. Well it would have been my choice, anyway (that or Anna’s camping one).
Very moving, and wonderfully expressed. So much imagery. Utterly fab.
A deserved winner - and set apart from the usual Acerbia “house style” as well, which somehow makes it all the more special.
Agreed! Well deserved!
Thanks for the kind words and praise. I’m sure my father will be very proud to hear that a piece of my fiction had such an effect on an audience.
In that case I would have preferred it if you’d started your post with the words, “This is made up.” But then you probably wouldn’t have made Post Of The Week. Blog readers tend to believe what they read.
I’ve felt for some time that POTW is a little too literary. Can’t remember if there’s been one single *link* in a shortlisted blog post. Certainly too few to register.
It’s blogs we’re doing, folks - not story magazines. Just my 2p.
Who cares if it’s made up? It’s a very well written post. The beauty of Post of the Week is that it allows us all to write in different styles, and differing formats.
Er, but aren’t blogs mostly about writing? Words on a screen? Sentences? Yes, yes, I know that there are videoblogs and photoblogs and linkblogs and legblogs (oh no, not legblogs), but ninety-five per cent of the time it’s about words. Now, words are creative. With no offence to linkbloggers, why would somebody nominate a post with a link in it for Post Of The Week? “I simply LOVE the way this person wrote their a href tags! And the words they used in the two-word underlined link were remarkable!”
And putting words together - whatever those words are, whatever they might be describing - is a creative endeavour. Do we now have to start explaining what is fact and what is fiction? Blogs are not story magazine, no. Except. Some are. Some are about stories. Some are about nothing but links. I’m not saying that posts that are just links shouldn’t be included - I’m not making the rules here, after all - but I’d like to see somebody try.
Sigh.
I needed to rant. Sorry.
I just felt deceived, that’s all. I read the story (as it turns out to be), feeling that it was a post (ie true). I suspect others did likewise.
To misrepresent my valid point about “containing” links (which is how blogging is defined in most dictionaries), to one of “nothing but links” is deliberate misdirection. Doesn’t fool this one, sorry.
When I nominated this post, I knew that it was fiction. If I hadn’t immediately known upon first reading it, I think a quick read of the rest of the front page posts would have been enough to let me know that this was a blog that wrote almost exclusively fiction and if even then I hadn’t been sure, it still wouldn’t have made any difference.
I don’t think this or any other writing is less noteworthy just because the it isn’t about something that actually happened and if anyone feels slightly ‘cheated’ by the fact they were taken in or affected by a piece of fiction it only stands as greater testament to the quality of the writing that it was able to do that. The literal truth of the situation described is wholly irrelevant.
I think D’s blog is brilliant, and the fact that it’s fiction neither lessens or distracts from the fact that his writing is so good.
Let’s stop worrying about what constitutes a ‘blog’, and instead celebrate some exceptional storytelling.
I’m mildly disappointed that it wasn’t a true story. That’s what I like about blogs, you see. The fact that people are opening up about intimate true stuff. I’m a nosey-parker, and fascinated by people.
But it doesn’t really matter. It was brilliant writing, and there was obviously at least an element of embellishment. And the best fiction is that which contains truth, feel real, touches you. This piece of writing does all of that. It still deserves to win, and it never claimed to be truth - that was just the assumption of those, like me, who didn’t bother to check.
And the assumption rocks on. If it says Stephen King on the cover then you know not to cry at the sad bits.
I would hope that (in my elderly, pre-senile way), the post, and the winning, and the subsequent, might spark a little debate among the cinders.
Usually when I make a point the response is catastrophically opposite. Thank you for being the one voice here chiming a little with my own. I’m much more used to immediate and unthinking rejection. They shout so quickly, but rarely do they think.