Apprenticeship

This week we're turning our attention towards style. How the author writes is just as important as what the author writes. Read the following passage from Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes, and pay attention to not only how he uses descriptive phrases, but also how he incorporates dialogue into the scene.


The worst thing in the world is to be sleeping in your dead grandmother's bed wearing her black dress when your uncle The Abbot falls on his arse outside South's pub after a night of drinking pints and people who can't mind their own business rush to Aunt Aggie's house to tell her so that she gets Uncle Pa Keating to help her carry the Abbot home and upstairs to where you're sleeping and she barks at you, What are you doin' in this house, in that bed? Get up and put on the kettle for tea for your poor uncle Pat that fell down, and when you don't move she pulls the blankets and falls backward like one seeing a ghost and yelling Mother o'God what are you doin' in me dead mother's dress?
That's the worst thing of all because it's hard to explain that you're getting ready for the big job in your life, that you washed your clothes, they're drying abroad on the line, and it was so cold you had to wear the only thing you could find in the house, and it's even harder to talk to Aunt Aggie when The Abbot is groaning in the bed, Me feet is like a fire, put water on me feet, and Uncle Pa Keating is covering his mouth with his hand and collapsing against the wall laughing and telling you that you look gorgeous and black suits you and would you ever straighten your hem. You don't know what to do when Aunt Aggie tells you, Get out of that bed and put the kettle on downstairs for tea for your poor uncle. Should you take off the dress and put on a blanket or should you go as you are? One minute she's screaming, What are you doin' in me poor mother's dress? the next she's telling you put on that bloody kettle.


As a response, write a paragraph or two that reflects this style: run-on sentences, unquoted dialogue, and conversational language. It can be about anything you choose, and it doesn't have to be written in the same Irish brogue of McCourt, but it must include those things.