The tears flow freely whenever I think
Suggestion: The tears flow free whenever I dare think.

But I haven't heard from him since that day
Suggestion: I wait to hear from him day after day.

Being hurt by the man that I adore,
Suggestion: It hurts, for he's the man that I adore

These are my monologues now but your dialogue
is one I hope
continues for hours of calendar minutes.

My suggestion:
These are my monologues now,
but your dialogue is one
I hope continues for hours of calendar minutes.

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- First of all, I love the name! I always have loved alliteration. It makes things sound somewhat playful. This would definitely compel me further in if I wasn't already here.

- I see that you blog like me, sporadically unless you have a purpose to do otherwise. I'm all about saying something if you have something to say. But just talking for the heck of it... shucks, that's what the newsfeed's for, right?

- You have a very playful way of writing, and you enjoy fun things. I love that you enjoy writing for the Musicology Anthology.

- My favorite entry is your youtube video of Jimmy Fallon and the Roots with Carly Rae Jepsen singing "Call Me Maybe." We love Jimmy Fallon and watch him all the time. So I remembered when they did this.

- I read probably ten or more entries, and enjoyed them all. It's really hard to critique a blog because it's someone's personal space to be who they are. Your writing is clear with no grammar or punctuation problems, so I think it's great!

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- It's very important, no matter what you write, to hook your readers immediately. I read through the first few paragraphs, and immediately I wanted to know more about the view.

"The coastline below me is vastly different from the metropolitan area that so recently filled my view."

This is a great first line, but then you left me hanging. Tell me about the differences that cause you to relax. The best way to do this is to use your senses and then describe using as many of them as you can. For example:

"The blue-gray coastline below me is vastly different from the fog-filled metropolitan area that so recently filled my view. Here the scent of honeysuckle on the breeze calms my heart and the sounds of the water brushing against the sandy shore clears my mind."

Now, I've never been to Scotland, so I'm just making stuff up, but you can see where I'm going. And again, since I've never been to Scotland, I would like more of a description here. This will work to pull me into your memoir.

- At times I wish you would add more detail, such as what I described above. Other times, the detail is a little too technical, such as when you are describing the layout of the house. It would be better to describe the colors and the feel instead of just the floor plan. However, this is much better than many people do. I really liked it, though, when you talked about picking up a photograph and how you let your mind wander over it.

- The mood is meloncholoy and the tone of writing matches this perfectly with writing it in the first person, and the use of remembrance markers. I thought this was one area where you excelled.

There was good transition as you began to think about why you needed a respite, and of your friend Nancy. I really liked the lead in. I would put this flashback type area in a {quote} {/quote} or at least use italics to set it apart. Formatting can be just as important as the writing itself.

The "side note" that you reference pulls the reader from the story instead of adding to it. You would be better off incorporating this in the previous paragraphs as part of the story you are telling.

- Be very careful about tense changes. There is a lot of skipping around from present to past. I personally think this would be easier to read if it was all past tense. I do like that you've written it in the first person, especially since it is a memoir type article.

Some area's need to be written more clearly. For example, "...one on the left Nancy's, one on the right-mine." It would sound better if you wrote this as "...the one on the left was Nancy's, the one on the right, mine."

Be careful about long run-on sentences. See how you can either separate them with punctuation and/or conjunctions, or shorten them. Example of a pretty lengthy sentence, "Several times she shared with me stories of her visits to the Rose Castle including details about visits with Lady Rose the last heiress of the Castle who left it to a Christian organization to use for youth type camps and as a B &B."

Don't use numbers or symbols in your writing. Rather, write them out. Example: "20#" should be "twenty pounds."

I perceive that this is a first draft and therefore did not do line by line edits. However, if after you've rewritten and tweaked (which every writer has to do, by the way), I'd be glad to go back to re-review and proof it for you.

The following paragraph was very well written, and was most poetic.

"I do not reach out to the world here. I will not for a while. This sabbatical was in lieu of a more severely restricted stay in a psychiatric ward. I will not play on the edge by exposing my mind to news of the outside world. It can wait. Or someone else can worry over it, mourn over it, be angered or frightened by it. I seek respite, renewal, relief."

Two further suggestions, which is just that, begin and end at the same moment. It would make the fully memory even that much more powerful. And, you make two very small references to your marriage, but unless you make this a bigger part of the story, I would leave it out. It really doesn't add anything to what you are dealing with in this article. If you decide to address it, the definitely incorporate it more liberally throughout the memoir.

This was a wonderful piece, and all of my suggestions above just serve to improve the writing and not your creativity or your story. I actually enjoyed reading about this time in your life because I could relate to various parts of it myself. Thank you very much for sharing this, and let me know if you decide to do a re-write.