This is a lovely poem with lovely illustrations. Your rhymes are on point, and the rhythm reads well. It was pleasant to read. I wonder if you have written more about Desi. I would definitely read another poem this good. Did you do the illustrations yourself? They are beautiful.
The story is wonderful. It is very Mother Goose, and not just because of the goose. I like that the feathers come from the goose but you would need a lot more than one goose to make all the things that you suggest came from it. I like that you closed the poem with her using the blanket and pillows made from the down in the first stanza. It wraps things up really well and makes the whole thing cohesive. It is a well-thought-out and well-written poem. I really like the flow of things. The rhythm is nice the rhymes are cute.
I like the middle stanza. It is fun and playful. I appreciate the author's note it really made the poem clearer and answered any questions I would have otherwise had. It was as well written as the poem was.
This could have been put into a storybook and sold. I appreciate you sharing it with us, thank you.
Okay, in the third paragraph, I feel like you have an extra return put in the middle of the paragraph. It happens again in the fifth paragraph. Another idea
Then this is definitely not a short story. It is more of an essay. I would go back and change that. Another thing, it is not wise to use a contest entry as a genre. People search for things to read based on genres. You will get more reads if you choose another genre in its place. I would choose historical. Also, I do not see how children applies most of this had nothing to do with kids. I would replace that.
Another thing that would be good would be a note containing the contest name, prompt, and perhaps a link to the contest.
The meat of the piece is very informative. It taught me a lot. I admit to not knowing a lot about Erasmus before this. Was this written for the We Want Peace Contest? I feel like this would have been a good entry. I entered with a poem. It wasn't anywhere near as cool as this was. You wrote an informative and pleasant read. I offer you good luck in whatever contest you wrote this for.
This is a very short story. I found it through a random read and review. I wish I had been a member back then to attempt this. I have done a lot of micro fiction, one-hundred-word drabbles. Nothing this short. I like the challenge of cramming a whole story into a limited number of words. I have thought of attempting to create my own contest. It would come in three parts. The first month would be to write a story of twenty-five words on a prompt. Then, the next month, the winner of the previous month would be the prompt, and the word count would be a one-hundred-word story. Then, in the third month. After that, in the final month, the challenge would be to write a one-thousand-word story expanded from their entry the previous month. I would give small prizes each month and then a grand prize at the end. I think it could produce some great stories and encourage editing because that is kind of what the last month would be about.
That said I like this story. It reads well. My main suggestion would be to have put a drop or pop note with the prompt and mention if not link to the contest or challenge.
Omg, is this a life experience poem? It sounds like you managed to get out of a bad situation. You are brave to have gotten out and survived. This is a cautionary poem that is something victims should read. Identifying if they are in an abusive situation is the first and most important step in getting themselves out and safe. Escaping abusive relationships is hard, and getting out needs to be encouraged and supported in every way. You never know what can be the turning point. This poem might be that last precious push to get away that saves a life. Thank you for writing this. You have done a public service.
Now, I am going to go back and look at how this poem was built. You have written this in easily digestible four-line stanzas. They are each pretty focused on their topics. There is no form I can detect, but I do not easily recognize many. If this were written in a specific form, I would recommend a drop note describing the form. Sometimes it helps to better understand the choices made in poems if a reviewer knows what the poet was shooting for. Lastly, I couldn't find any rhyme scheme, which, for me, is fine. I do not care whether a poem rhymes or not, but an inconsistent rhyme scheme can ruin a poem for me. This doesn't bother me.
You follow the form well. That always impresses me. I tend to struggle with most forms. The only two that I have had success with, in my opinion, are limericks and haiku. They are easy forms, though. This Kyrielle Sonnet looks far too complicated for me to attempt recreationally. I might have tried one once, but not to this kind of success. For me, it flowed as though it were not so tightly constrained. I liked the whole thing together and the lines individually. Sometimes repeated lines can be a bit much for me, but the choices you made for them are individually beautiful, and they dovetail beautifully with each other and the other lines they are paired with. They make for a well put-together poem.
It speaks of love and all of the things that love blinds us to. I like that it does a lot for the different phases of life and how love affects them and how they affect love. Growing old in terms of the average day to day life, aging is not romantic. It is arthritis, incontinence, dementia, and the approach of death. In terms of aging and love all you see is the beauty of growing old together.
Firstly, if this piece had been any longer than it is, I probably would not have read it because of the formatting. Writing dot com does not respect the tab key the way word processing programs do. It does not indent the first line and gives you the little break showing a new paragraph. Usually, because of that, people put two returns between so that there is a place to tell paragraphs apart. Why this matters is that it can be difficult to read if they all run together like this. Trying to read longer pieces is just too difficult. I get lost, and I am not the only one.
Now, as to the meat of this. You are clearly a later generation than I because your words speak to a discovery of this technology as opposed to being raised with it. I am old enough to appreciate that my phone makes it easier to take pictures. I guess that is also because I am not a total control freak. Though my phone does offer options on changing camera settings in the same sort of ways as some of the levers and gears. I appreciate the enthusiasm that encourages retaining older technologies. Sometimes there is a reason that they are retired, though. You gave an enthusiastic argument, and if I hadn't been raised on those cameras, maybe I would be swayed by it.
Yes, exactly. I remember when I was young bowriting was what the teacher wanted for homework spelling lists, reports book or otherwise, I could not see the point of writing. My father often lectured that writing was not work. It just didn't count. I needed to find a real job, that paid, any amount... I think sometimes he would have prefered me becoming a prostitute rather than messing around arranging words. It is just one letter after another, making words. Anybody can do that so what is special about it? It is what the words become when put together correctly. A person has to learn what their voice has to say and be true to it. Not everyone is a poet. Not everyone can string together a story others would want to hear. The real challenge to becoming a writer is first learning what you have to say. I love that this goes past that to the faith that words have enough value for the writer to be able to publish them and capture an audience. My father calls it a delusion. I call it a manifested gift from the real creator.
When you get that book printed. Let me know. I will definitely be looking forward to it.
It is nice that he was able to reflect upon himself after seeing nature in action. It is true the tree does not make judgements about how it grows or what is expected of it. The tree just grows. It uses light and water and air to make life and doesn't judge itself over what that life is supposed to be.
Elias has been warn down by life, expectations, and judgements that really have no bearing on who or what he actually is. They have lied to him until they have nearly completely immobiliezed him.
Worse it isn't just other people doing it to him. His own life and expectations for it have beaten him down just as much as the expectations of others because he has allowed the expectations of other color and warp his own judgements to the point he can not see the original plan of his life. All of the wonderful could have beens have been beaten into submission. But the tree manages to inform him of other possibilities. Moving with a wind he is numb to because he has only been conditiond to feel the pressures and movements of the flawed people around him. It seems sad until the tree comes along.
This is a sad poem, it really seems to lack hope. It made me want to cry. I have felt the deep desperation to find something other than darkness peeking around one's edges. Deep childhood hurts make deep childhood traumas. It is nearly impossible to climb out of the pit of trauma without help. It can feel like every tiny hope is just a slippery handful of mud passing through your fingers as you try to climb free.
Memories you wish to forget bash you over the head every time you try to reach past the trauma and the broken child inside breaks a little more at the inevitibility of failure. You begin to see the past as an absolute predictor of your whole future.
Emotions fight with hope. Instead of steadying it they scream to be acknowledged as the only truth. Separated from their real triggers any stimuli becomes a disaster.
Ocassionally you can break through the veil of hopelessness and glimpse what could be. But those 'could be's just serve to hurt you more because you have long been trained in the school of "never will"s
I hope someone offered the poet that necessary hand out of the pit of trauma to find their way to happiness. If not do not be afraid to ask for help.
This is very well written. The way you showed his original attitude and the entire progression to a new point of view is amazing. It was entirely believable. It makes me wish men like him had to read this story because I think it would make a huge difference in their lives. The slow creep of the ultimate transformation showed his internal turmoil and the resolution of emotions long buried in his psyche. "Billy" was a disgusting pig of a man who only cared about keeping his second brain busy. "Tanya" is a person finally honest enough with herself to see that she had been treating other human beings badly in both thought and action. It reminded me of the first night I had with my wife and the magical switch it turned in the way I felt about myself. Being with her washed away a large part of a lifetime of self-hate and religious fears, making my feelings feel real, honest, and natural. It opened my eyes to a lot of things. One thing I always believed was that homosexuality was wrong; after all, there were no gay animals. I had a pair of female dogs that took care of each other's "needs" the first night with my wife brought me to realize. If God didn't smite two dogs for being lesbians, why would he automatically hate me for it? The really funny thing is a few months before we got together, I had taken her out to lunch at Village Inn, as friends. During the lunch I blurted out, "I love you." At that time, I panicked and brushed it away by adding "As a sister." Part of me knew I was lying at that point, but it took a few more months for honesty to break through. I think this world needs a lot more open minds than we have these days, what with MAGA and the religious right. This country is on the verge of taking some very big steps backward. I fear for all of our futures when we allow narrow minds to direct our course like this. I would have been interested in discovering how Tanya's old circle of friends and acquaintances reacted to the realizations she came to. It is a mere curiousity though. I think it would ruin the tone and overall triumphant awakening at the ending. I think it is just partly because I know how my family reacted when I told them and I did not feel like I had reached as triumphant a new place in my life. I was so scared of how my father would react that I didn't actually tell him for fourteen years.
Ouch. That was a bummer of an ending. Poor guy. But he did get to live life to the fullest before the accident. He realized that he was not meant to avoid all danger because avoiding all possible accidents didn't leave you doing much. It wasn't a life worth living for him. I don't think it would be for me either. I wonder about the woman though. How would she feel after a long time of wearing them . Now she wouldn't have the clerk to tell her how to get them off. Would she even want them off though. was she the sort of decent person that would? or is she the cruel kind that the shoes would let get hurt? Great story I loved it.
This is a very profound story. I liked what it says about connection and appearances. I loved the miracle and kind of hated the gatekeepers. I don't know why; they weren't being evil or anything. Each of the characters made me feel something different. The astronomer talking about the constellations made me sad and hopeful at the same time. I like this story.
What a sweet little poem! It touches my heart. I never got to watch that when I was little. My father said that everything Halloween was of the devil. For that matter, holidays in general were evil. He grew up a Jehovah's Witness, even though he became an evangelical Christian. I never got Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, or the Tooth Fairy. Magic was evil incarnate, so he tried to suck every bit of it out from my childhood, no fairies, no dragons, no unicorns. That meant no fun and sweet little holiday specials like Great Pumpkin. Somehow, I still felt the magic of the wait when I finally saw it as an adult. This poem is just as magical for me as the special was. I felt the innocence and childhood magic from it. I am definitely waiting in the field with you and Linus. I really enjoyed this poem. It was the refreshing read I needed with everything going on in my life these days. Thank you so much for sharing it.
Wow! That is an emotionally draining story to read. The quiet desperation just kept building. Then she just died. That was when the real drama began. All of her character building built the other characters not her she just stalled out. This is the first time the main character in a story died in the beginning and I still felt compelled to finish the story. Great job!
This is a quick moving chapter. A lot happened. I can see how they are becoming the anti heroes of this story. I would say heroes but they are both murderers. The overall structure and all were pretty good in this chapter, I didn't see typos or missing words. I assume you rushed the last chapter just a bit.
Whoa, still feeling soar!” should be sore. There are several places that words are left out that make the sentences rough. My suggestion is to go back and read aloud to make sure they say what you think they do. The mechanics of this chapter were a bit rough but the story progressed well.
This was a good chapter it moved things along.my one problem with it is that it wasn't clear to me how it happened that thruce went on the fishing trip with Dave and cuin. Also what was going on each day was less clear as you mentioned a three day pass and they only seemed to have gone there on two days.
I definitely identify with a person being the main reality of being home. My wife just got out of the hospital. For the entire time she was there I could not get comfortable. I was in our house, with our fur babies but I was not home. She's home now and forever, wherever she is, is my home. I am so sorry that you lost your home. Homelessness is hard to survive. You can live with the hope that like finding another house perhaps you will find another person to be your home.
Thruce is fairly sympathetic except the way he is dismissive of Carmen's suicide. He is good to the people he works for but disregards his victims and their families. I also don't get how he doesn't seem to care his cat died anymore he as a tortoise to make up for it?
This chapter introduced Thruce better than the first chapter did. And has more of a hook. It is based on the drama of losing his cat and having a moral uncertainty about his behavior. It marks him as a not irredeemable rogue. Then he goes to get even more drunk. It leaves you wondering if his epiphany will survive the hangover.
I don't think that you absolutely have to have researched a particular gun to the point of footnotes. This is hundreds of years into an alternate future. You could have just made one up. I like the shades of feelings he is having about this job, clearly he senses things are hinky. I would be worried if he hadn't noticed something.
This chapter was a bit steamy. It seemed like it didn't matter to the plot, until the end where she is being blackmailed to get dirt on Cuin. It moves to establish characters and I love the dog.
This is a great introduction to both characters. It has just the slightest twinge of being overly infodumpy. I am not sure how you could avoid that while introducing the characters. As a first chapter of something longer it lacks a hook to dig into the reader and drag them into reading the whole story. It needs action. Instead of starting it with the doctor bit perhaps you could start it with how the two characters meet. Then come back to their origins and backstory as a part of them getting to know each other better. Overall not bad but not quite an efficient first chapter.
This seems more like a quick outline than a real story. I love the ideas presented. I am too lazy to see if you really used each word only once but it looks like you did on the surface. I know how hard it can be to write a story in exactly one hundred words and I can only imagine how much harder it would be to do it without repeating any words. Given the constraints placed on it it is a pretty good story. I like the choice of the name, it is just that shade off of the common name to fit well to this character.
Sounds pretty awful. I have crossed the country in a plane, in a van, and in a train, but never a bus. This makes me never want to give a bus a try. The plane hurt my ears because of the air pressure change. The van was fun because I was a child unrestrained in the back (before mandatory seat belts.) But The train was both bad and good, I have traveled in a seat for nine hours, and i have traveled in a handicap accessible roomette. The roomette was the best way to go. It came with a meal, prime rib, salad and cheesecake. It also meant we could move around and we had our own toilet.
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