Now that's sweet! It's reminiscent of a start of a chapter in a book I'm writing where a boy falls from a cloudbank. Interesting.
I love your spare language chock full with content and emotion. That's quite an accomplishment. I guess that's what happens when you have a 100 word limit AND you actually have an interesting point to get across. You've also chosen a topic that has a fast enough pace to make a fast 100 word read all the more effective. Well done. It comes across quite nicely.
Now that's sweet! The split in line one and two is the only flaw, and a minor one at that. The reader's mind stops with a period at "last", and makes it difficult to follow the flow. On second read, however, this piece roars! It is conceptually brilliant. Well done!
-Craig
Very clever, busy bee! It took a couple of reads to fully "get it," but it was clever enough to make me glad that I did. I would suggest that the end be a bit more of a giveaway as to the age of Emily. Adults take naps. Perhaps add a blankie. You could trim a word here and there to allow for it. In any case, this is a great story, and written quite nicely. Well done!
Very ambitious for 300 words, but therein lies the problem. You've loaded so much into so little space that it's very difficult to get one's mind around what you're writing. You had a plot concept, starting at, say, point A, and ending at point B. The troubles happen when you try to bridge that gap, especially where you have word limits. Then you start adding the spices, details, and there's so much going on that your readers can't keep up. When this happens in novels, where there's much more space to expand things, point A to point B plot writing becomes two dimensional. To an educated audience that type of writing is apparent and dissapointing. Readers want to be imersed completely in the good stories they read, so it sits on the writer to put themselves more in the audiences shoes, producing a living, breathing world for the reader to become part of, rather than to write for one's own pleasure.
Nice effort. Interesting ideas and you have skill at storytelling. Some editing and rewriting is needed. For example:
A dark, muggy room surrounded her. Kathy lay in a mess of tangled sheets that smelt ["smelled". "Smelt" is a fish or a process of metallurgy.] of beer and vomit. The sight of this [use "the" not "this"] room sent a chilling ["chilling" is an unnecessary adj.-- 86 it] shiver up her spine. Dazed and groggy [which is it? dazed or groggy? What exactly does dazed "and" groggy mean. Can you explain that to someone? you don't need both, so cut one], she had no idea where she was or how she got there [this phrase is a cliche and should be rewritten or cut]. Her head pounded [use a better word than "pounded". eg. throbbing, felt like a waterballoon, etc.] as she tried to remember what had happened to her.
Kathy stared in the mirror. She hated the way she looked[,] but [she needed to get going because she had kept her friends...] knew she had kept her friends waiting for [cut "for", it's unnecessary] too long.
“Are you coming?” An impatient voice called from downstairs. [what kind of voice was it? a man? a woman? a parrot?]
Sarah, Becky, and Natalie had patiently waited for her but now they just wanted to get the party started. [so, now we know it was probably a female voice, but a sentence too late]
“Yeah, I suppose.” Kathy answered, [start a new sentence with your "Slowly she left the bedroom, and kept her eyes on the mirror until it was no longer in sight."] slowly leaving her bedroom, keeping her eyes on the mirror until it was no longer in sight. This was an important night, [period, not comma, or possibly an em dash or a colon] it was her 21st birthday and she wanted it to be perfect.
Please, consider some of these instructional editing ideas and the thoughts behind them. Rewrite to improve the clarity of your piece.
All the best.
-Craig
Your preamble is a bit awkward, and although just two sentences long, it contains a blatant redundancy. "2000 was a bit of a milestone for me." and "that particular year was of particular significance to me."
Because of that, as reader, I was already hesitant to continue reading. The first sentences, especially as preamble, better be brilliant, or you'll lose your audience.
Then you start with the heading "I.". That made me scroll down and see how many chapters was this piece with poorly written starting sentences. Because there were almost 2,000 words, I decided to skim and see if the subject was something that might be interesting to me.
Luckily, there was enough content for me to go back and start reading, but the writing didn't strike much of an emotional chord with the reader, me. The events you relate are interesting, but they read like a simple list of experiences, and fail to connect with the reader on a deeper emotional level, because you haven't effectively related the importance or their impact on you. You say they have impact, but there's nothing written to demonstrate it.
I would suggest that as a start you might work harder on your introdutory sentence(s). Make the reader feel a compulsion to find out what comes next. If you can do this in the first sentence or sentences, then you will have no problem maintaining the drive of the rest of your story.
love the double-line offset format. great topic. positive and constructive in thought and feel. Your piece is too literal for my taste and its simple idealistic tone doesn't draw me in emotionally. Drugs, parents, peers and grades are obviously important issues for you as the author, but it doesn't effectively hit us as readers; they're just a list. what follows them thus comes off more as platitudes than moving or inspirational thoughts.
Keep up the good work. Remember, writing is rewriting! All the best.
-Craig
loved the meter and pace and the short stanzas. the imagery is effective and the colors add to the clarity. you might consider some more content. eg. marie antoinette's treason and its base in sympathy for France's enemies and the trumped up incest charges against her. But you've stayed simple and close to the surface, and it is what it is, but I think your work would rock with some more content, especially considering the subject matter.
Love it. This is one of the best poems I've come across on this site. Excellent allusions! Your piece gives strong sensual impressions of the place, time, and mood; excellently done.
Some editorial suggestions for polish and it would read:
At midnight the old mosser comes along,
Easing clumps of moss from cypress branches.
Wearing darkness as her cloak.
Once hundreds came to fill baskets,
Rails hung with moss drying in the sun,
Eerie curtains blowing in the breeze.
Then came progress and modernization,
Age old opponents of mossers.
Now the cypresses billow with moss,
Whispering secrets we will never know.
Ageless words and mumbled incantations,
Over bits of bright cloth and dried plant,
Sepentine fingers sew the voodoo doll,
Wearing darkness as her cloak.
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