Aw, them good ol' cowboys, guaranteed to set your heart all a flutter.
What I love about your work: I really enjoyed how you weaved the words, capturing a sing-song flow without lulling me to sleep. The rhymes were well worded without needing to twist the English language. I always appreciate that.
Why I could relate to your work: Having grown up with a few cowboys myself, it was nice to see something that brought them to mind. They were always loyal to a fault, good hearts and people you could count on.
Any big typos: I didn't see anything that stood out, nicely done.
I really enjoyed the flow of this poem and liked how you called attention to cowboys. Well penned.
Oh, I am so ready to come stay for the weekend!!!! The pictures are beautiful and the descriptions are cozy, drawing me in and making me want to design my own dream home. Especially the library/music room. . . Belle's library, here I come! This stirred my imagination and got my daydreams working on overtime. Lovely :D.
What I love about your work: Your message carries loud and clear and I hope your daughter hears you.
Why I could relate to your work: I'm a mom of three young girls who I am constantly telling them that the only opinion that should matter is theirs and that others' cruel words don't matter.
Any big typos: There were a couple of spots that tripped me up. The first one is this line "Where ever you go." In the context that you used "Where ever", it should actually be "wherever". Where ever would be better used if you were asking a question, such as "where ever did you get that shirt?"
The second line that got me was "Your the greatest star......". Your is incorrect here and should be "You're".
Overall, I found this a very sweet, touching poem that captured the attitude I want my daughters to have. There is so much strength in a person who can move past the judgments of others and be strong in his/herself. Nicely done.
What I love about your work: I love the hope and daydreams of this little girl and I loved how you made me like her and wish the best for her.
Why I could relate to your work: I have three little girls of my own, ranging from 3-9, and I wanted to kick the mommy's butt. Your child should not fear you. This tugged at my heart strings and made me want to save her.
My suggestions: My only suggestion would be to bring that it's her fifth birthday up into the first paragraph somewhere. I didn't feel like I was reading from a five year old's mind-frame and if I'd started out with that, I would have read it differently. I know that sounds weird, but as I read, I build the character in my head and read in his or her voice, so if it feels like one thing but ends up another, I'm completely thrown ;).
I enjoyed the quiet strength of this little girl and wish the best for her, that she becomes a teacher or a starship commander or something great. Well penned.
This grabbed me right off the bat because of it being a dedication to your wife, but you did a really great job at capturing the impact a good teacher can have.
What I love about your work: I thought this was an incredibly sweet dedication to someone who clearly inspires you and many others. I love how you wrote something that could be considered mushy in a different context, but yet comes off as strong and honoring someone instead. Well done.
Why I could relate to your work: My grandmother was a teacher and if I go back to school when my children are older, I've thought of getting a teaching degree because of a special teacher who touched my life in fifth grade. You reminded me of her with your kind words and why I wanted to teach.
My suggestions: Honestly, I don't really have any. I smiled through the whole thing and hope you've shared this with your wife. There's my suggestion :D.
People so often forget the impact that teachers have on children, but there are very few people who cannot name a favorite teacher they had growing up. This poem captures the essence of that idea while paying tribute to your mate. Well done.
Let me start by saying, this story has so much potential, it gave me the goosebumps.
What I love about your work:I love the setup and I got a kick out the swearing. Entertained me greatly.
Why I could relate to your work:Even being a mommy, I still find children incredibly creepy. When you're walking down a seemingly empty hallway and in the distance, you hear the isolated sound of a child laughing... shudder. So, this totally sang to me with the creep factor :D.
My suggestions:I do have a few for you. The first being that you read it out loud. The number one best way of catching your errors is to read your story out loud. It helps so much and catches like 80% of your errors.
Secondly, this is something I am working on, but it helps to make your voice stronger. Try to remove the passive voice. Google passive voice as google knows all and can explain it better than I. The number one biggest indicator you're using a passive voice: using words like was, were and had.
And something that is helpful to the reader is to put in line breaks. Just an extra enter so that our eyes don't get worn out.
Any big typos:I actually found several.
For instance: "I walked across the church parking lot avoiding the puddles and head down the street." It would be more grammatically correct to write it as "I walked across the church parking lot, avoiding the puddles, and headed down the street." However, there's that passive voice thing, here would be my suggestion to fix that too: "Before I headed down the street, I walked across the parking lot and avoided the puddles." Rewording is a pain in the rear, but it will make your story pop that much more.
Make sure you read through and try to catch the errors. Having one or two isn't a big deal, but when there are more, it is distracting and takes away from your story.
Overall, I enjoyed this story and definitely had goosebumps at the end. I love ghost stories so this just appealed to me. Pen on.
What I love about your work:I thought the heartache well penned. You definitely felt your heart break with her.
Why I could relate to your work:As someone married to my best friend, and who's little sister's boyfriend (basically a brother) is dying from a brain tumor, this story was certainly something I could relate to.
My suggestions:I actually have a few suggestions. The first being that you may want to put an actual line break in your work. Reading that much online without line breaks is hard on the eyes ;).
Secondly, this is something I am working on and I hope that perhaps it helps strengthen your writing as well. Try very hard not to use the passive voice. Passive voice includes words like was, were and had. The best explanation I can give is to google it. Turning your writing voice into an active voice versus passive is the best thing you can do for your stories.
And, I swear this is the last one, you might want to find a way to clarify what she's done with her son. When you discussed her finding everything in her son's room, I wondered if a terrible accident or something occurred to the boy too. It was a little confusing and just needed a little tweaking.
Overall, this was a heart-wrenching tale and it ended well. Nicely done.
Lol, you and those cows! I cracked up the entire time that I was singing this... yeah, I was singing it. Love the original but could totally moooove to this one. I thought you worked the rhymes in wonderfully well, I wasn't tripped up by any odd language manipulation. I even had images in my head to match this. Very, very entertaining write. Oh and I didn't see any glaring mistakes, so... write on!
What I love about your work:First off, I like that it's written from a man's perspective and actually feels like what I would expect a man to speak and think like. Am in the middle of reading a book where the male character feels so... fake, so this was refreshing. I also very much enjoyed the game of cat and mouse. It was cute.
Any big typos:I didn't really see any as I got sucked into the story and forgot to be looking for them. Sorry.
Enjoyed this quite a bit, liked the fascination and the sudden edge of danger. As they say, write on.
As a parent, thumbs up. More people need to think like you. I see so many kids who are sheltered and coddled to the point of making them incapable of functioning and I think the whole lack of competition lends itself to that mentality.
What I love about your work:I think you're spot on. Removing the competition from our children is akin to removing their motivation. Just finished reading a book that calls out, we cannot fix human nature by removing what we think are bad traits, that it removes good as well.
Why I could relate to your work:I'm a mother of three young ladies, all under the age of nine and competition is one of the best ways to get them to work. We have a chore system where they get a ticket for each chore they do. At the end of the week, we do a drawing from the tickets and the winner gets a half hour past her bedtime. They get paid $.10 for each ticket but they have learned, the more tickets in the container, the better chance of getting to stay up. We also use it to teach sportsmanship, our daughters congratulate each other on their wins and don't pout when they lose because they know, there's always next time. I think that's important so this article totally spoke to me.
Any big typos:I didn't see anything major, but that could be because I was busy nodding my head in agreement ;).
An informative article that brings attention to an age where the idea of handicapping our children for the future is embraced. Enjoyed it. Well done.
First off, the idea of an elevator forgotten by time that just goes down... creepy. You caught my attention right off the bat.
What I love about your work:The atmosphere of this piece was dark and mysterious, drawing you in with promises of shadows the normal scare. Very much enjoyed that.
My suggestions:There were a couple of details that tripped me up and even after reading them, I still felt a bit confused. For instance, you explain that it took them four years but then explain, that it was two years ago that they found the blueprints and realized the ultimate possibility of riding the elevator. Not sure if there was something more going on there then explained in the tale or if it was just an oversight of numbers.
I would recommend reading it out loud, it helps you find awkward sentences and little detail mistakes. Plus, I've found when I read out loud, more details leap out at me that could be added here and there.
Aside from a couple of places that tripped me up, I really enjoyed the story. The concept was frightening and I want to know what they find. The ending left me eager to read what awaited them. Nicely done.
What I love about your work: I enjoyed the development of the characters. I thought Oliver was an imaginary friend but with one line, you blew that theory out of the water. Creepiness.
Why I could relate to your work: I love ghost stories and being the mother of small children who have on more than one occasion done freaky things, this definitely hit a note with me.
My suggestions: I was not a fan of the paragraph where you delved into Oliver's fits for the first time. You mentioned his anger multiple times, switching between both characters in the same paragraph, and ultimately not adding anything new to Oliver was an angry little boy. I would recommend you reword this paragraph, maybe combine some of those sentences or something. It interrupted the flow but not enough to break up the story.
Any big typos: This line right here: "Nanny Carol must have heard the crash because she came running down stairs with Jamie on her hip and burst into the kitchen where Peter was uselessly wiping at the mess of brown milk and glass that covered the floor." I believe there should be a "the" before stairs and a comma would help break this sentence up a bit.
I would also recommend you run back through and add some commas, help break up the run on sentences. Asides from the missing "the" and commas, I didn't see any glaring errors.
I am so not sure what to think of this. Holy moly... I'm just kind of sitting here, staring stunned at my computer and I can't decide if I should be sad over their doomed romance, angry at you for catching me in such an emotional web, or happy that you did catch me in such a web. Grrrrr. We'll go with all three. That is a helluva little story and it's overwhelming in the concept of a life that will be ruined but be saved to be ruined over and over and over again. Wowsa. Well done... with a little fist shaking in there.
NOOOOOO! That's my reaction when I discover we are going to be left suffering with the main character for the rest of time, wondering what happened to Becky and Johnny! No, you cannot be so cruel!
Seriously, this was a great idea and I would love to see you take it even further into a longer story. Fun houses are creepy to start out with and then throw in the haunted, malignant factor. Well done. Even if you leave me so unsatisfied! Lol, well written, excellent job on catching the atmosphere and despite myself, I enjoyed the ending too.
You know, I'm torn on this story. I enjoyed how fairytaleish it was and the ending definitely was cringeworthy but I'm not a fan of the lessons. You definitely showed the kids should not trust strangers (which was good) but the story also showed Jake cannot trust his parents and made them very unlikable. All we're exposed to is them yelling, telling their kid he's lying when he's telling the truth, and almost celebrating when he disappears. If you're using this as story to teach lessons, you may want to modify the parents. You want to teach in a story that pushes not trusting strangers, that parents are trustworthy. It's a unique take on a classic fairytale and was fun to read.
This was an interesting read but there were a few spots that made me hiccough.
This line right here "It was an odd gathering of people in different period clothing; not just from hers, but from each other's attire. " The last half of that sentence doesn't make sense. I'm not sure what you're trying to tell us.
Also, when she takes up the Elder's challenge, you have that she just wants to prove him wrong. I've reread that section multiple times, what is she proving the elder wrong about? That she can't see with her eyes and soul or that she can't meet her spouse?
I enjoyed the premise and if you decide to make this longer, there's so much you can do with it. You can have her making rounds to her neighbors' houses and getting doors slammed in her face, noticing the children playing without making a sound, etc. Good idea, just needs some polishing up to make it shine.
Such a fun read, the idea of hummingbirds sounding like crows.... Yikes. I can understand the starlings and the goose. Hummingbirds are noisy enough! This had a nice sing song flow and there were not any obvious mistakes to distract me. I liked the characters and the story line was adorable. Well done.
There were a quite a few grammatical errors that tripped me up a bit but this story held me from beginning to end. The darkness inside of this woman and she didn't even recognize how it was eating her and turning her into something else. It was transfixing and I had to read more, find out how it climaxed. When she didn't put down the knife, I knew it was coming but honestly, expected him to die so was glad to be surprised. Quite a fascinating read.
Admittedly, I had a small difficulty getting into the story at first. The conversation felt a tad bit forced but once we got into Andrew packing up and prepping to go over, my interest was peaked.
I don't look at the at the categories when I read these but loving to read and tell horror tales, I felt the underlying chill factor going and was sucked in. The scene in the park had me leaning towards my computer screen, almost holding my breath.
After reading such an intensely creepy oogy scene without a drop of blood in it, the last line kind of fell a little flat. Perhaps beef it up a bit with a "that was the night Andrew Collins was last seen" or "Matthew never quite recovered from the night that his best friend disappeared." Something that is just a little... more.
This was a fun read and quite creepy. Nicely done.
Lol, this cracked me up. There were a couple of places that I stumbled a little over the flow and admittedly, I do not have rewording that fix that but asides from that, I loved this poem.
I totally see this person sitting on their couch, almost hovering over the game, giggling a little as they collect another cat. However, coming from a family who owns eight barking dogs... I'm impressed you can finish that game regularly. In our household, my imagined person would be covering their mouth when a big dog shoved their weight between the couch and game, scattering the coveted pieces everywhere, many to be devoured before they're ever seen again.
This poem made me truly laugh and agree that despite the madness that the herd brings, it's so much easier to handle than when we also had the cat crew. Such a wonderful, delightful read. Well done.
Quite an insightful read. You have faced adversity and not only rose above it to help others but are using it to bring awareness to an issue often downplayed or simply over medicated. This is something that I feel strongly about and think more people should be paying attention too. Your thoughts are well organized and you make it personal without making it too personal. A perfect balance. Nicely done.
Take a break! Go paint, sculpt, ride a jet-ski, find a muse, do something that pulls your mind from writing. The sooner you walk away and give your mind a break, the more likely you'll be able to come back to it. Every writer has faced a moment, sometimes an excruciatingly long months to years kind of moment, where it feels as if you'd rather put your hand on a hot stove and hold it there than write. This note brings it oh so vividly up and the knowledge that the best way to uncork your well is to let it be until the water's ready to flow again. If this is where you are right now, may the muses shine bright upon you and remind you of the pleasure of writing again.
Another excellent read, love the atmosphere each of your pieces captures. This was so cute and I loved the ending of the little boys bickering quietly. It was absolutely adorable. After reading your post yesterday, I not only expected you to win but hoped for it. Sometimes, a piece just resonates with you and this was so cute, it did so. Love your work, as they say... write on!
Even without the explanation about your mother, I enjoyed this piece but when I read the bottom part, it just added to the character. I like your mother's logic and like it reflected in what you've wrote. The idea of giving to those in need to show you true love is a pretty concept and you captured it quite well in only a few stanzas. Nicely done.
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