Atonement

I've been trying to get into contemporary fiction lately. After all, if I hope to get published someday then I should know what my peers are doing. I am starting with the much accoladed Ian McEwan and the novel Atonement. I'm only 7 pages in and already:

"She took her daughter into her arms, onto her lap--ah, that hot smooth little body she remembered from its infancy, and still not gone from her, not quite yet--and said the play was 'stupendous,' and agreed instantly, murmuring into the tight whorl of the girl's ear, that this word could be quoted on the poster which was to be on an easel in the entrance hall by the ticket booth" (4).

"The pages of a recently finished story seemed to vibrate in her hand with all the life they contained" (7).

It's just beautifully written, very true, and I feel so inspired right now. Someday I want to write something that makes people feel these very things. Right now I'll stick with what I'm calling my "Creepy Little Girl" stories. Perhaps someday they will be bound together in a book called, "Creepy Little Girls and the Mothers Who Love Them".

In all seriousness, though, I think I was a bit hard on my story the other day. It felt a bit irredeemable, but I've been looking at the work shop responses and it seems like its completely fixable. I'm just going to take a bit of a rest from it for a few weeks.