Maegan! Nothing makes me happier than a new Fresh Meat post surprisingly arriving in my inbox. Such a joy, that feeling.
I've read this story twice now, and I have to be honest with you: I'm feeling really really stupid. Because my brain doesn't function on this level. I just can't get it. And my inadaquacy makes me sad. Because I know that everything you write (at least everything I've read of yours right up until now) is always some next level brilliance. I just can't decipher all the shape stuff.
I'm getting a metaphor for compatible people. The disillusionment with life. Things not being how we imagined them to be. Lovers becoming strangers. Strangers becoming lovers. And I'm really hoping that if I give it a day, then come back and read it a third time my brain will allow me to unlock the code.
I have that same feeling now that I have from never ever not even once in my life being able to look at one of those magic eye pictures and being able to see the hidden 3D pic that everyone else can see. :(
Hi Kris! Thanks so much for reading. Well your metaphor interpretation is spot on, but I don't like that you're feeling stupid while you read, so I am thinking maybe it's a little too abstract. Excellent feedback you've given here. Thank you!
Let's wait and see what others get from it before jumping to conclusions. I'm kind of on the spectrum. I'm totally abstract and see the world in metaphors... so long as they're my abstract metaphors!
I've got a feeling it won't be too abstract for the majority of your readers. My brain's just lacking certain tools of decryption. Always leaves me feeling stupid.
Hey Maegan! So, I've slept on it and then read it again. It's definitely clearer now. My ability to focus is always better in the morning. The main confusion I have is, up until the point where Bill is fucking the narrator while letting their shapes touch at the same time, I'm under the impression that the way these people fuck is by putting their shapes into each other. So then it becomes confusing again. My main question is, what kind of penetration is more intimate/pleasurable/reproductive? What's more painful (or carries more stigma), to find out that your wife took some dick or that she let another man touch her shape with his shape?
I'd love you to show this in the story. An example could be, the narrator admits to Nathan that she's been fucking Bill. And as Nathan takes in the information, (not crying, because triangles don't seem the type for overt displays of emotion), he asks, "Did you let him inside your star?" And when his eyes become wet as he hears his worst fears confirmed, we understand where crotch and shape both sit on the intimacy hierarchy.
Oooh very interesting suggestion there!! And ok, I am seeing a common confusion over the shapes/intimacy mental vs physical. Quickly thumbing you this message to say thank you and I’ll process more slowly later!!
The pacing was killer. I found myself engaged completely and felt like maybe some of the shape stuff was over my head but felt like I got it too, like the people weren't the right "fit" and I had the feeling she felt inferior to him like he was a fine specimen of some kind I could even interpret that as a person who had some kinda mental health thing being with someone who didn't get it but anyhow the sense it gave me was almost like synesthesia, if I am using it right the shapes led me to an emotional space. I love the risk you took with exploring this concept alongside the difficult and resonant subject matter.
Ah we got to chicago in 2010. Just missed ya! If you’re ever in Nash, please reach out. Would love to reconnect and talk shop. Until then, can’t wait to read more!
I feel like Nathan finds the tracking devices too easily, and that maybe you could a few details to hint at whether Nathan is having an affair, or just working too much (right now it feels like working too much but I haven’t much to base than on).
Really great, I’m glad you figured out a loophole for sharing.
I love the shape idea, it reminds me of those neck devices in Rant by Chuck or those things they wear in Liberation Day by Saunders. I want to know more about the mechanics of them. I was confused at first because I assumed everyone had them in the same place on their body, and I didn’t know what they looked like (scarring, birthmarks, sunken skin, raised skin, etc)
Maybe you could use the advertisements to do some of that work, and build up some of the societal stuff around it. (“Are you a square looking for triangles in your area?”)
The passage of time was also a little bumpy during some of the transitions, maybe you can start the story where you end it so it’s kind of enveloped as this sort of suicide note if that makes sense?
Thanks for sharing, always love reading your work!
Matt, thank you so much for taking the time to read and for your very specific comments. The raised skin, that is good--yes, I hadn't considered putting texture into it, texture would be helpful. Great ideas for aligning the ads, and yes, passage of time can be jarring, so thank you for letting me know where you bumped. These (and everyone's) comments are so helpful. I know it can be hard to tell someone I got confused here/I got bored here/I don't get it, but it is so so so unbelievably helpful. Thank you.
I love the shapes, but I thought they were a metaphor for love, sex, and compatibility until Bill came into the picture and there was real world sex as well.
A suggestion: clearly establish how the shapes work in the beginning for all 3 of those things. Love, sex, and compatibility, and scratch the real world sex being a thing on top of the shapes.
I think I got the gist of the story. I was thinking of how that whole metaphor for personality uses shapes. Y know like “don’t be a square/what a square” and “round peg in a square hole” thing.
And when I thought about “stars” in this I eventually thought about the davinci Vitruvian man diagram. How that could be Star-like.
And then the pictures at the end the witch-crafty triangle symbols and pentagrams and all:
Hi Andy, and thank you so much for reading and commenting! I love hearing yours (and others') interpretations of the shapes, because I'm very interested in how each reader may personalize it differently. Personality/compatibility was my aim, but I love the idea of the various associations each reader may have based on his or her experiences. Above all, my hope is for the shapes not to cause annoyance/confusion to the point that the rest of the story is lost. Thank you again, and I'll look forward to incorporating your feedback in my revisions!
Another brilliant bit of writing, Maegan! I've just made a few notes on bits that I particularly liked:
I love the concept of the shapes (but at first, I was unsure if it was a metaphor or if they're real/visible or some sort of synesthesia?).
It reminds me (in a werid way) of something I always tell my little boy: that he gives the best hugs because he fits in all the right places. Like something that makes you whole. Only this is (obviously) taken much, much further.
At points in the story (mostly the newborn stage), it's so relatable, probably because there's the feeling of so much guilt. The line "I tell myself it doesn't matter" is particularly heartbreaking as it feels so sad: the longing, the loneliness, the affirmation of sex.
I like the use of food imagery. The honey in both the dream sequence and then in the tea, and the use of orange in the drinking to destruction sequence is just lovely, and again, I like the repetition of the orange juice imagery.
So yeah, as always, I come away from reading your stuff completely envious. Excellent stuff.
Matt, thank you so much for the kind words. I really appreciate you taking the time, both to read and comment so thoroughly. I like how you connected hugs with your own little boy. Because, yes, the shapes are not exactly a sexual thing on their own. I looked up "synesthesia" and that is part of it, I think, but I do think I need to illustrate it more as a physical thing as well, like raised scar or something textured yet flat-ish, like Matt Andersen suggested. It's hard to explain (lol!) which is why it helps so much to read how others take it. I'm taking everyone's comments in and am excited to see how I can clarify certain things but still leave it open so readers can make their own personal connections. :) I'm also glad to hear you liked the orange juice, I really want to hang onto it if I can. And the loneliness, I want to crank the heat on that feeling of incompleteness, especially right before the affair. Thank you for picking up on all you did, Matt, and I hope you are well and writing!
Haha, he doesn't always fit well. Sometimes, when he's dropping on your chest with both knees from a height, there is no fitting, only unexpeced impact.
As for the shapes, I like how you wrote about them. I like leaving it up to the reader's imagination.
If it's any help, I saw them almost like an augmented reality, as in they're kind of there but not. Like a tattoo, but not. Or like when you cut biscuits out of a slab of dough, and there's this disconnect between the pieces, but they're still kind of together.
It also (for no real reason) reminded me of the game 'Thomas Was Alone'.
I wish I was writing. I have ideas and sentences, but nothing really to tie them all together. Mostly because of time constraints and, more importantly, laziness.
Hope you're well too (you're obviously writing!). If you need any unprofessional proofreading, you know where I am!
I like this ending, it really conveys that sense of being adrift, that moment before the train moves. I wonder if you could incorporate that theme into the affair? Bill initiates and she allows. Like, she’s so into pressing their shapes together and holding his coffee and sharing photos of her kid she almost doesn’t notice he’s removing her clothes… a subtle illustration of how this world is moving around her and she’s struggling to fit… anyhow, you capture it in the passive way you describe the affair. She’s not fucking Bill, Bill is fucking her…
The paragraph about babies and “no one tells you…” is great. Poor mom. Work in Eric abandoning her to parent, a little foreshadowing.
A memory about how her dad used to comfort her by pressing his shape into hers might make the mechanism of your metaphor more apparent? Or even better, when she meets Eric and it doesn’t fit, she remembers how her parents fit their shapes together to press into hers? Don’t know what shapes that would be, ha! Maybe diamond and triangle and add an older sister with another triangle? Maybe that’s too much Twister imagery, unless they all had on their wrists, too, like the girls at work. Ooh, then the girls at work could be her “little work family!” which could be another tragedy when she loses them to stay home with her daughter…
Akin to Kris Mole, I'm either feeling stupid, or for me, maybe bored. I was waiting for something interesting to happen. This doesn't sing for me in the usual way of your work.
I still don't know if the shapes are meant to be literal or a metaphor. If literal, why, for what purpose if they're not a useful aid for living and choices? They sound more like astrology, no actual meaning, only something people like to believe in order to give themselves characteristics or a generic description.
The long paragraph on new motherhood is stylistically different to the rest of the story. The 'no one tells you ' preface is the basis of 10 thousand books and a million mummy blogs. So yeah, everyone tells us. They won't shut up about it.
What was found in the banking and phone records? How was the tracking device suspected and so easily found, and what happened to the second device?
The train, as referenced in the title, and scenes in the story, as a metaphor and a literal train, doesn't feel fresh, it's fairly plodding as a device.
Other than those specific comments, for me, this was a pedestrian story compared with the zest and sting and originality of your other works.
People commute on trains, couple meet, couple have baby, both partners cheat for reasons not revealed, couple break up, the end.
It’s nice to meat you, Meagan! I encountered your work through a recommendation from Amran Gowani. I gotta say, I have the exact same problem you mention in the opening paragraph. Looking forward to reading more of your work soon!
Nice to MEAT you, Andrei, and thank you so much for reading. And yes, the unpublished/published balance, urgh!! How does one do it? Lately I've been experimenting with micro-fiction or short-shorts. This might be a new avenue for me to be able to have my cake and eat it too? Only time will tell!
The loophole takes you to your homepage, not a secret doc!
shit!
That other link works
Ok thanks. Hashtag fail! I tested it too. 😢
Maegan! Nothing makes me happier than a new Fresh Meat post surprisingly arriving in my inbox. Such a joy, that feeling.
I've read this story twice now, and I have to be honest with you: I'm feeling really really stupid. Because my brain doesn't function on this level. I just can't get it. And my inadaquacy makes me sad. Because I know that everything you write (at least everything I've read of yours right up until now) is always some next level brilliance. I just can't decipher all the shape stuff.
I'm getting a metaphor for compatible people. The disillusionment with life. Things not being how we imagined them to be. Lovers becoming strangers. Strangers becoming lovers. And I'm really hoping that if I give it a day, then come back and read it a third time my brain will allow me to unlock the code.
I have that same feeling now that I have from never ever not even once in my life being able to look at one of those magic eye pictures and being able to see the hidden 3D pic that everyone else can see. :(
By the way, is the story called Neon Field? (My brain does love an anagram)
End of Line. Neon Field is cool though!
Aaaaaah! That makes way more sense!!
Hi Kris! Thanks so much for reading. Well your metaphor interpretation is spot on, but I don't like that you're feeling stupid while you read, so I am thinking maybe it's a little too abstract. Excellent feedback you've given here. Thank you!
Let's wait and see what others get from it before jumping to conclusions. I'm kind of on the spectrum. I'm totally abstract and see the world in metaphors... so long as they're my abstract metaphors!
I've got a feeling it won't be too abstract for the majority of your readers. My brain's just lacking certain tools of decryption. Always leaves me feeling stupid.
Fair enough, but how about other mechanics:
Pace? Too slow? Slow because of abstraction?
Boring places?
No, all that stuff was good! Great pacing. Especially the second half. The sentences are excellent, too. Very well written.
Hey Maegan! So, I've slept on it and then read it again. It's definitely clearer now. My ability to focus is always better in the morning. The main confusion I have is, up until the point where Bill is fucking the narrator while letting their shapes touch at the same time, I'm under the impression that the way these people fuck is by putting their shapes into each other. So then it becomes confusing again. My main question is, what kind of penetration is more intimate/pleasurable/reproductive? What's more painful (or carries more stigma), to find out that your wife took some dick or that she let another man touch her shape with his shape?
I'd love you to show this in the story. An example could be, the narrator admits to Nathan that she's been fucking Bill. And as Nathan takes in the information, (not crying, because triangles don't seem the type for overt displays of emotion), he asks, "Did you let him inside your star?" And when his eyes become wet as he hears his worst fears confirmed, we understand where crotch and shape both sit on the intimacy hierarchy.
Oooh very interesting suggestion there!! And ok, I am seeing a common confusion over the shapes/intimacy mental vs physical. Quickly thumbing you this message to say thank you and I’ll process more slowly later!!
The pacing was killer. I found myself engaged completely and felt like maybe some of the shape stuff was over my head but felt like I got it too, like the people weren't the right "fit" and I had the feeling she felt inferior to him like he was a fine specimen of some kind I could even interpret that as a person who had some kinda mental health thing being with someone who didn't get it but anyhow the sense it gave me was almost like synesthesia, if I am using it right the shapes led me to an emotional space. I love the risk you took with exploring this concept alongside the difficult and resonant subject matter.
Thank you so much, Grace.
Heil Meagan! That was so good!
Thank you for taking the time to read!
Really loved this! Did you live in Chicago for some time? I could visualize so much.
I did live in Chicago for about two years! Thank you for reading! Hope you are well! :)
Did you live in Chicago also at some time?!! Maybe we crossed paths!
Yes! I lived in wrigley, then boystown, and my happiest years were in Andersonville from 2015-2018! Where were you?! I miss the city so much.
Lakeview from about 2007-2009!! I miss it too!
Ah we got to chicago in 2010. Just missed ya! If you’re ever in Nash, please reach out. Would love to reconnect and talk shop. Until then, can’t wait to read more!
I certainly will! I'm due for a trip that way, plus it's cold up here!!!
Well I know what I’ll be doing instead of watching the Super Bowl!
Totally forgot about football, hahaha 😂 🏈 !!!
Maegan this was great.
I feel like Nathan finds the tracking devices too easily, and that maybe you could a few details to hint at whether Nathan is having an affair, or just working too much (right now it feels like working too much but I haven’t much to base than on).
Thank you for reading, Craig, and very helpful feedback!!
Anytime.
Pacing and controlling tension are my biggest struggles these days.
Those are the trickiest and the most desirable!
Really great, I’m glad you figured out a loophole for sharing.
I love the shape idea, it reminds me of those neck devices in Rant by Chuck or those things they wear in Liberation Day by Saunders. I want to know more about the mechanics of them. I was confused at first because I assumed everyone had them in the same place on their body, and I didn’t know what they looked like (scarring, birthmarks, sunken skin, raised skin, etc)
Maybe you could use the advertisements to do some of that work, and build up some of the societal stuff around it. (“Are you a square looking for triangles in your area?”)
The passage of time was also a little bumpy during some of the transitions, maybe you can start the story where you end it so it’s kind of enveloped as this sort of suicide note if that makes sense?
Thanks for sharing, always love reading your work!
Matt, thank you so much for taking the time to read and for your very specific comments. The raised skin, that is good--yes, I hadn't considered putting texture into it, texture would be helpful. Great ideas for aligning the ads, and yes, passage of time can be jarring, so thank you for letting me know where you bumped. These (and everyone's) comments are so helpful. I know it can be hard to tell someone I got confused here/I got bored here/I don't get it, but it is so so so unbelievably helpful. Thank you.
I’m glad! Good, critical feedback is worth its weight in gold (although mine might be closer to silver.) Good luck with the submissions!
I love the shapes, but I thought they were a metaphor for love, sex, and compatibility until Bill came into the picture and there was real world sex as well.
A suggestion: clearly establish how the shapes work in the beginning for all 3 of those things. Love, sex, and compatibility, and scratch the real world sex being a thing on top of the shapes.
Hi John! Thank you for taking the time to read and comment. Excellent points and suggestions. Thank you!
I think I got the gist of the story. I was thinking of how that whole metaphor for personality uses shapes. Y know like “don’t be a square/what a square” and “round peg in a square hole” thing.
And when I thought about “stars” in this I eventually thought about the davinci Vitruvian man diagram. How that could be Star-like.
And then the pictures at the end the witch-crafty triangle symbols and pentagrams and all:
Am I in the right track :)
Hi Andy, and thank you so much for reading and commenting! I love hearing yours (and others') interpretations of the shapes, because I'm very interested in how each reader may personalize it differently. Personality/compatibility was my aim, but I love the idea of the various associations each reader may have based on his or her experiences. Above all, my hope is for the shapes not to cause annoyance/confusion to the point that the rest of the story is lost. Thank you again, and I'll look forward to incorporating your feedback in my revisions!
Hey Maegan -- hope you're well! Sorry to say I won't have time to dig into your story -- home with sick kids -- but good luck with the submission!
Hi Amran! Thanks for dropping by! Hope your kids feel better soon :)
Another brilliant bit of writing, Maegan! I've just made a few notes on bits that I particularly liked:
I love the concept of the shapes (but at first, I was unsure if it was a metaphor or if they're real/visible or some sort of synesthesia?).
It reminds me (in a werid way) of something I always tell my little boy: that he gives the best hugs because he fits in all the right places. Like something that makes you whole. Only this is (obviously) taken much, much further.
At points in the story (mostly the newborn stage), it's so relatable, probably because there's the feeling of so much guilt. The line "I tell myself it doesn't matter" is particularly heartbreaking as it feels so sad: the longing, the loneliness, the affirmation of sex.
I like the use of food imagery. The honey in both the dream sequence and then in the tea, and the use of orange in the drinking to destruction sequence is just lovely, and again, I like the repetition of the orange juice imagery.
So yeah, as always, I come away from reading your stuff completely envious. Excellent stuff.
Matt, thank you so much for the kind words. I really appreciate you taking the time, both to read and comment so thoroughly. I like how you connected hugs with your own little boy. Because, yes, the shapes are not exactly a sexual thing on their own. I looked up "synesthesia" and that is part of it, I think, but I do think I need to illustrate it more as a physical thing as well, like raised scar or something textured yet flat-ish, like Matt Andersen suggested. It's hard to explain (lol!) which is why it helps so much to read how others take it. I'm taking everyone's comments in and am excited to see how I can clarify certain things but still leave it open so readers can make their own personal connections. :) I'm also glad to hear you liked the orange juice, I really want to hang onto it if I can. And the loneliness, I want to crank the heat on that feeling of incompleteness, especially right before the affair. Thank you for picking up on all you did, Matt, and I hope you are well and writing!
Haha, he doesn't always fit well. Sometimes, when he's dropping on your chest with both knees from a height, there is no fitting, only unexpeced impact.
As for the shapes, I like how you wrote about them. I like leaving it up to the reader's imagination.
If it's any help, I saw them almost like an augmented reality, as in they're kind of there but not. Like a tattoo, but not. Or like when you cut biscuits out of a slab of dough, and there's this disconnect between the pieces, but they're still kind of together.
It also (for no real reason) reminded me of the game 'Thomas Was Alone'.
I wish I was writing. I have ideas and sentences, but nothing really to tie them all together. Mostly because of time constraints and, more importantly, laziness.
Hope you're well too (you're obviously writing!). If you need any unprofessional proofreading, you know where I am!
I like this ending, it really conveys that sense of being adrift, that moment before the train moves. I wonder if you could incorporate that theme into the affair? Bill initiates and she allows. Like, she’s so into pressing their shapes together and holding his coffee and sharing photos of her kid she almost doesn’t notice he’s removing her clothes… a subtle illustration of how this world is moving around her and she’s struggling to fit… anyhow, you capture it in the passive way you describe the affair. She’s not fucking Bill, Bill is fucking her…
The paragraph about babies and “no one tells you…” is great. Poor mom. Work in Eric abandoning her to parent, a little foreshadowing.
A memory about how her dad used to comfort her by pressing his shape into hers might make the mechanism of your metaphor more apparent? Or even better, when she meets Eric and it doesn’t fit, she remembers how her parents fit their shapes together to press into hers? Don’t know what shapes that would be, ha! Maybe diamond and triangle and add an older sister with another triangle? Maybe that’s too much Twister imagery, unless they all had on their wrists, too, like the girls at work. Ooh, then the girls at work could be her “little work family!” which could be another tragedy when she loses them to stay home with her daughter…
Akin to Kris Mole, I'm either feeling stupid, or for me, maybe bored. I was waiting for something interesting to happen. This doesn't sing for me in the usual way of your work.
I still don't know if the shapes are meant to be literal or a metaphor. If literal, why, for what purpose if they're not a useful aid for living and choices? They sound more like astrology, no actual meaning, only something people like to believe in order to give themselves characteristics or a generic description.
The long paragraph on new motherhood is stylistically different to the rest of the story. The 'no one tells you ' preface is the basis of 10 thousand books and a million mummy blogs. So yeah, everyone tells us. They won't shut up about it.
What was found in the banking and phone records? How was the tracking device suspected and so easily found, and what happened to the second device?
The train, as referenced in the title, and scenes in the story, as a metaphor and a literal train, doesn't feel fresh, it's fairly plodding as a device.
Other than those specific comments, for me, this was a pedestrian story compared with the zest and sting and originality of your other works.
People commute on trains, couple meet, couple have baby, both partners cheat for reasons not revealed, couple break up, the end.
Trying to love it, but can't get there.
Thank you for taking the time to read and comment, Caz! Your specificity is helpful and I’ll take it to the table when I work out my revisions.
The third last line ... Some stories do not have happy endings ... Is clunky. It could be deleted entirely for better effect.
The ending is problematic.
It’s nice to meat you, Meagan! I encountered your work through a recommendation from Amran Gowani. I gotta say, I have the exact same problem you mention in the opening paragraph. Looking forward to reading more of your work soon!
Nice to MEAT you, Andrei, and thank you so much for reading. And yes, the unpublished/published balance, urgh!! How does one do it? Lately I've been experimenting with micro-fiction or short-shorts. This might be a new avenue for me to be able to have my cake and eat it too? Only time will tell!
Let us know how it goes.