A Pithier Introduction

So, I gave it a few days, thought about all my pretty words—I really liked the description of the beach sights and sounds, but it seemed to delay the real action. This is a revision of the first few paragraphs of Girl Running—Hopefully it’s more effective, without diluting what I needed to convey.

Two paragraphs instead of five. Have I been too extreme?

During those winding down hours, long after paraphernalia-laden and sunburned city-dwellers headed home, Leila too started for the beach parking lot. Disregard for July’s midday sun now showed up as sunburn, evoking the feeling of seven years ago—being ten again, eating gritty peanut butter and jelly, digging sand out from around the elastic of her swimsuit. Racing her daddy in the sand was fun compared to her ten-mile jog, but the fatigue of it was one of the best sensations she knew.

In the emptying parking lot, sprays of sand stung her legs and whipped strands of hair from her unraveling braid. That’s when she caught sight of her little blue car sitting without neighbor, jarring her from bittersweet memories. As she approached the passenger door, seagulls overhead called out and dashed toward the ground to fight over someone’s leftovers, discarded beside what was obviously a flat tire.