I just reread this with an eye to the original story, and I don't see any grammar or punctuation errors. Perhaps the author's writer friend applied formal writing rules to this brief vignette. I've had long discussions with others about the punctuation in some of my offerings, and I don't think either party was ever satisfied.

You write from life, Queenie? So you sit around looking at the sky at all hours of the day wishing you were a hippo who could fly? That's - an interesting preoccupation.

This was cute. Reminds me of the time I was doing beta work for another author in another fandom, and she had post-apocalyptic vampires going to the surface from their underground lair to play football in the afternoons. They didn't sparkle, either, and she was horrified when I finally saw it myself and mentioned it to her. She changed it to have them play dimly lit night games so the human protagonist/narrator could see them.


Life isn't a support system for writing. It's the other way around.

- Stephen King, from On Writing