Slave Diary

April 26, 1830
Mom,
It's been three years since I've been home to Virgina. Master Tom reported that Skylark's tumor has put his life to an end. In your last letter you said that Gina has been born with no legs. My little sister will never walk. Mom, I know that you will never get this diary, but if you do someday when Tom finally puts me out of my misery, than want you to know that I love you, and I am writing this for you. But for now, I am only a kidnapped slave with her diary hidden.

April 28, 1830
Mom,
Today, Tom did not feed me. I am trying to convince myself that he just plumb forgot,but I know in my gut that he wants to get rid of me. I had only a half-loaf of bred yesterday. I should have noticed before that my portions were getting smaller. But I don't blame him. Who would want a 9 year old girl as a slave anyway? Mom, can you promise me something? Can you get skylark a grave that says, 'Creel's beloved horse'? He really was one of a kind.*

Tom's whip sliced my arm hard as it cracked. Ten. I thought. This is the tenth time he has whipped me.
Mom said in her last letter that she was diagnosed with skin cancer. She says that it's not a big deal, but I think that she just doesn't want me to worry.
Tom's whip cracked again.
"Now." Tom said. " Go into the fields and I want you to plow it like a man. Got it?" I nodded. Another crack of the whip.
"Now get!" Tom said. I ran off. Why can't whites at least have some respect for blacks?
When I was little, my mother would sing a song to me that went like this:
'Spread your wings and fly, my girl. Your as fast as a hawk, and as beautiful as a flower. You've got the power to fight off the bad and the power to save the good. But promise me one thing my girl. Always stay the same.' But I can't fight off the white men. Their horrible. The only thing that Tom let's me have of home is mom's letters.


April 29, 1830
Mom,
You told me that you were not doing well. Please, Mother don't die on me. Your the only one I am living for. And I love you.




I wish Tom would have at least given me my stuffed elephant, named Ellie. Mom had given it to me when I was very small. But I was outside, sitting next to my favorite tree, when the white men captured me. So he didn't even know about Ellie. Oh, how I miss you Mom.


April 30, 1830
The last letter I got from home was from Dad. He said that you had died in the hospital. Your cancer was more series than you thought. Mom, your all I've got to live for. But you left me. Alone. With no were to go.
You left my sister. Mom, you left us all just like you left dad. Why, Mom? Why did you leave?


Master Tom had given me a knife to cut wood. But I had the knife for a different purpose.
I held the knife's blade up to my neck. Well, if Tom wasn't gonna put me out of my misery, than I guess I was. I was just about to pull the knife though my neck, when I heard Tom's voice. I pretended to be doing work.
"You!" He called. He threw a soft package at me. When he left, I ripped open the brown paper. Tears filled my eyes.
It was Ellie.

You did a REALLY Great job with this! For real! It really brought tears to my eyes and it was kind of similar to my life experience in a way. Keep writing Forever Love - Genesis

Hello, and thank you so much for entering my contest, "The Little Things."

I would like to start off by saying that you seem to have a pretty good handle on your narrator, Creel. There was only one spot where I feel like you slipped out of character momentarily, which was when she says, "he just plumb forgot." While "plumb" is a word they might've used in the 1830s, it doesn't really gel with Creel's voice. Other than that, however, you did a good job with her character.

Another thing I liked was your "little moment." It can be difficult to pull this sort of thing off in a short story, but you did it very well. You managed to introduce Ellie's importance without making it obvious that it was going to return later. Subsequently, your little moment didn't have to have a flashing neon sign next to it saying, "THIS IS IT!" It was very well done.

Now, having said that...I have to say that I did not find this story very believable.

First of all, it was illegal for slaves to read and write. If Creel was from VA, she would most likely have been born a slave, and neither she nor her family would have been literate. Even if she somehow learned to read and write in secret, her master would not have allowed her to write letters to or receive letters from her mother. This is especially true of Master Tom. He whips Creel, he starves her, he's mean and demanding - yet he gives her her mother's letters, when it's illegal for her to even be able to read them, and he gives her the package containing Ellie. Those actions don't fit his character. Also, I fail to see how Creel's family would've had a horse - on the off chance they were free, despite being a black family living in Virginia in the 1830s, they would've been too poor to afford a horse. They would also have been too poor to afford a gravestone for a horse, especially an inscribed one, which would've cost a lot more.

Overall, I think this could be a good story, even a great story, but you need to do some research on the time period. Find out what the laws were, the styles, the modes of living for slaves and their owners. If you can create a believable setting, time-period-wise, a believable story will follow. You can do this.

Thanks again, and I hope this helped.

~Blue

Hey Mary(I assume it is your name)

Mia here to review you, and I hope I can help you out.

First of all, I'll like to warn you about writing a Historical setting novel mainly because for writing such a novel what you need the most is research. Whatever the time period might be, it should be in your tips and you might have to go beyond the Web knowledge and read, explore for yourself, come to conclusions. Otherwise the readers would never get the feel of the story. So, what I want to say is that you should be 'precise in your facts'. The reason for me saying this is that you've addressed the letters to a person called 'Mom' which means mother but in those days no one used to call their mother 'mom'. It's a modern term and even until fifty years back not many people used to say 'mom'. So that is one big thing in your novel and I'd advise you to work and read everything about this era, as far as you can.

I won't drag this review, but I'll like to tell that how your idea is quite unique on this site. I've read many stories here, about this period about that theme but reading something about slavery has been the most new thing I'll be experiencing today. I won't say it was in the best written form, I know you could do better and this story has a lot of hidden potential, but from what I read somehow I was totally wrapped up. When I think about it, there wasn't anything too unique about your writing style, but it still made me feel good and transported me to that era. I am surprised because you didn't have any facts or anything to indicate about that era, but still I enjoyed.

I can't wait to read the next part and know what and how Ellie is going to change our MC's life. I feel too sorry for her. She's too young and she has to go through pain that even people in adulthood can't face without losing hope. One thing that I'd like you to take care of is that you need to make it clear when you're showing us the diary and when there is normal narration in between the story. It was actually confusing for me, but I hope you'll work on it.

You had some weird grammar typos in words and small mistakes here and there and they were so common that I got the feeling that you were maybe doing all that on purpose. Were you? If not, then PM and I'll do another review and make those things clear to you.

Until then,
Mia