R4: Resonate

It didn't resonate. As her mother lit up with the family's "one big trip" to the Grand Canyon, and how "Sloaney" was afriad of the donkeys," Sloane knew she was supposed to swoon. Toward this memory, sun-shot, familial, rustically warm. But it meant nothing. That trip, she'd been obsessed with a boy named Jared who was staying in the neighboring tent. She'd spent a week twinging every time they neared the campsite, sunburned, her nails bit to the quick.

Q4: Quickly

Quickly, he shoved the pink tongues of his dress shirt bottom back into his jeans, flushing from his cheeks into the roots of his fuzzy hair.

P4: Post

What comes to mind is Lionel Shriver's "The Post-Birthday World," which, though it took me a while, I loved.

"Post" could be so many things - a quick trip to the X office, the occurence of a fight x-grocery shop. What will Muriel, Sloane, Dewey, Warren, Chigger and ? do "post"?

Post-riots, Seattle was - briefly - a quieter, smaller town.

O4: Obstruct

She didn't want to obstruct things, but sometimes it felt like progress was actually something that moved us, all of us, backwards instead of helping to simply make life work. Muriel flushed. She was pretty sure the "all of us" that lived in Africa or Appalachia wouldn't necessarily agree.

N4: Necessary

"Is it really necessary to belittle us, Dad?" Sloane jammed the tablecloth into the washer, knowing Muriel would have preferred she soak it in the backyard tub. "I mean, does it make you feel better somehow?"

M4: Mating

For all that Dewey's body spun wildly, careeningly electric, he was also disgusted with himself at his core; as his parents would say, what he was doing was sex, not romance - mating in place of making love.

L4: List

Before I write my sentence, I should recognize that despite the tumult of life lately, this blog has kept me connected to writing, and to fiction, in a real and gratifying way.

Even better, this latest iteration, the 4th round of my 50 words per letter exercise, is holding some of my "I'll never write again" fears at bay. Every day it pulls my mind back toward Muriel and Dewey and Chigger, and now their new counterparts Sloane and... well, I don't know if either Warren or Cole will survive.

Today's list, then, could be a number of things:

Muriel listed the ingredients slowly, watching the boys and girls eyes widen and waiting for the giggling to start.

Dewey kept a list in his pocket, of all the things he'd now never be able to do.

Sloane knew the list by heart: bachelor's degree, medical school, residency, intern.

And who else?

Warren listed all the ways he'd failed.

OK, ok, I skipped Friday. But 4 sentences on a Saturday is a pretty good deal.