Finis #3, For those interested...

A work in progress.  So, for those of you who have been following along with my writing course you know that I've started posting exercises and most recently the rough, the draft and now the finale of my third assignment (due in two days).

The First Draft was what I had jotted down quickly in response to the actual assignment which was to "Show, not tell."  Describe a place from your childhood using showing words rather than telling words.  Basically, drawing a picture of the place in words.

When I went back to review, I realized that I could do waaaaaay better and was half embarrassed that I had even posted the original rough storyline.  But, I wanted that "this is off the top of my head" feedback.  So, then I posted what I thought to be an improved Second Draft.

I will say, that at this third assignment I feel I'm finally beginning to 'Get it'.  So, in the note I am requested to provide to my instructor along with my assignment, I will be able to share this with her.  Though, I haven't found a completely comfortable age group/genre to write for.  I feel that, as with my blog, I'm sometimes all over the place.

Or, maybe it comes down to am I doing what I want to be doing or is what I'm doing what I want?  Something like that.  Yeah, figuring that one out is hard.

Anyhow, unless you provide comment to some drastic change/s to be made -- this is pretty much what I plan to turn in tomorrow:
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THE WOODS (Final draft)

Behind my grandfather’s house, the passageway into the Arkansas woods is littered in pinecones. Huge tall oak trees outline the trail as upsweeps of narrow pines tower above the earth along the way; the ascending evergreens checkering through them. The woods are always peaceful as Autumn settles in. The dense timber hushes the woods and it’s inhabitants into an eerie quiet.  The shrubs, now almost completely naked and stripped of their foliage, sit still.  From time to time, the tranquility breaks at the barking chatter of a grey squirrel.

Wandering my way along the path, the copper colored blanket of leaves crunches beneath my feet. An acorn cracks loose from somewhere high above me.  I hear the acorn falling, hitting a limb here and there on its way down. It slices through the air as it plunges from the peak of a tall, slender oak. It is an almost endless fall from the tops of the oak trees. Their grey trunks seem to rise forever up, up, up; glittered in bronzed and brick red leaves dotted only by a few that still remain green. An occasional breeze sways the treetops into shaking hands with the sky.

The acorn lands with a light thud somewhere along the path up ahead of me.  The descent surely snuggled the acorn deep into the damp, golden leaves carpeting the forest floor. Everything is changing colors from green to red, to orange, to brown. Fall handing the season over to Winter almost before my eyes. The timberland entices the senses, heightening sight, sound, and smell.  Occasionally, a crisp, cool breeze tickles my nose with the scent of damp dirt and a hint of winter on the way.  I lick my dry lips and can taste the soil fragrant air on my tongue.

A crisp waft chaps at my cheeks causing me to shiver as my toes begin to complain about the cold.  The forest comes alive as another gentle breeze blows, breaking free a few more leaves from their cozy homes up high in the treetops.  The burnt-sienna leaves twirl around riding the air as they rock back and forth on their way down. Thickening the leaf-blanketed ground as they come to rest on the damp, earthy path.

A flicker catches my attention as a doe saunters her way through the trunks of the trees.  I freeze so as not to alert her hoping she doesn’t see my breath lingering in the heavily dense air. The doe nibbles at the acorns on the ground.  Over my heartbeat, I can hear her mandible crushing the acorns as she chews.  She flitters her ears listening intently for any sign of danger as she noiselessly pads along her way, meandering as if she has no real destination. 

Tanned in light chocolate, her smooth fur shimmers as she passes through a ray of sunlight gleaming in a thin golden trickle from somewhere atop the trees. She mouths at a slender shrub, picking from it the last of the purple berries it holds.  Elegantly and serenely the doe steps her way through the timberland.  Then, just as mystically as she appeared she fades into the darkness of a thicket.

Exiting from the woods as if from another world, I emerge into the pasture behind my grandfather’s old wooden house.  Though now uninhabited, it holds apparitions of the generations that once dwelled within its walls.  Three red hornets, buzz in and out from a hole in the crooked, rotting window frame.  The window itself has not adorned glass in decades.  Soon the hornets will bury themselves to sleep out the winter in a deep underground hive.

The woods are enchanting in the Fall.

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So, can you see them?  The woods behind my grandpa's house?  Tell me....

Finis #3, For those interested...