Critique

How could so many things go wrong with a sentence.
1) it's too fucking long.
2) et al. is not even needed
3) >to this end aptly fitting in every circumstance.
what the fuck?
4) your word choice is concerning.
I hope you did not write an entire paper with sentences like this strewn about.

Yeah, I think you're nailing saying it's the Derrick did blah blah cause and effect. That's annoying to the reader and will undoubtedly obscure any other means of prose or effects in your writing

Santa came at last to the jolly elves,
sleeping now where they had worked - no merry tinkling bells.

"Resting?", he spat. "That's enough of that."
He roared and stamped his feet and threw down his fluffy hat.

The elves shrank back, and knowing what came next,
They pushed a weakling to the fore at Santa Claus' behest.

He snarled like a dog and grabbed its little throat.
He dragged it from the room, as it cried, then squeaked, then choked.

I wrote this when I was bored at work but I'm planning on expanding it in time for Christmas.

I'm a full blown Veeky Forums n00b and have never written anything like this outside of school so be gentle.

What do they think has happened, the old fools,
To make them like this? Do they somehow suppose
It's more grown-up when your mouth hangs open and drools,
And you keep on pissing yourself, and can't remember
Who called this morning? Or that, if they only chose,
They could alter things back to when they danced all night,
Or went to their wedding, or sloped arms some September?
Or do they fancy there's really been no change,
And they've always behaved as if they were crippled or tight,
Or sat through days of thin continuous dreaming
Watching the light move? If they don't (and they can't), it's strange;
Why aren't they screaming?

Oh boy, here we go:
>simple nursery rhyming
>shoving words to make them "flow"

This reads like a rap that was shat out by nas in 30 seconds, like a soundcloud rendition.
>I'm planning on expanding it in time for Christmas.
What is wrong with you. It's not even fucking summer yet.

the old fools is misplaced.
>And you keep on pissing yourself
What does this even mean.
>or sloped arms
okay what is this

I cannot relate to this, im afraid. My 45 years of writing poetry has not prepared me for this. What the hell are you doing?

Early sheltered hours
crept in like cats
and held our calls
below the window pane
looked through, a waxing moon
certain soon to wane
The tide bends to its powers
West down Hammersmith way
the same applies to flowers
coming and then going
two seasons in one day

>what is old age

the paragraphs got a bit "blobbed" when I pasted it here. The fragment is because I got scared of using to many commas. Which I went and did anyways. Would slapping a few "ands" in there work? Or do I need to rebuild the whole thing? Thank you

Gotta start somewhere, homie. I would have thought that with the basics would be a good idea.

Given that Nas is a professional (poet), it's no wonder he can shit out something vastly better in 30 seconds than a beginner can.

Thanks for taking the time to read and comment though.

From the shadows of the rain one man rode out. He raised his head and looked on ahead. A centuries old path left untended and mangled by the earth lay before him amidst forlorn glades and pitted white stones scattered about like discarded coffins and broken bits of bone removed from an extinct race of colossi. A long shot beyond stood high trees stern and formidable in their formation. As the man looked at those trees he saw their branches as they swayed in the stormbringer wind and thought they looked like reaching hands of starving men going for a bowl. There was a crack of lightning, and a resentful snort and stomp from his pampered horse. The man sighed. Another night under shower. He reached for the glove on his right hand with his left and pulled it off, then he reached forward with his naked open palm and he petted his steed.
"Sorry friend, it looks to be another night of wetness and misery for you and me. A shame that we've both become so soft and spoiled over the past few months, a little storm and a little bit of rain should be no nuisance to a couple of hardened veterans like us," The man smiled childishly as his horse chided him with a click of its teeth, revealing the relative lack of years lived by the so called "veteran". "I mean, think about it, remember in Caralybda? Where you and I and a whole legion wrecked our way through the smashed gate just in the nick of time for the double to come crashing in upon us!" The horse nodded. It still had a scar on its thigh where a spearman had thrust into him. The horse had fallen on it's back in pain and would have gotten another thrust through the ribs to the heart if the man hadn't have been there to cut the assailant down like a blood and pulp filled piñata.
"Ha, excellent! Those were quite some trying times, eh? You, me, dozens of our guys, hundreds of theirs all around, no place to run, no one to help us, our only option was to stand together and fight to the end. Fight we did, and no end came... for us, anyways," The man sniggered. It should be noted that he was not a cold hearted demon, but a warm and funny man who was always in the mood for a joke, food and good tales of the old fashioned sort, but if on the occasion you found yourself as his enemy, be it brought about from the personal or the political, then disregard the previous comment about him not being a cold hearted demon. He was a monster to his enemies.

Punctuation is a must here. So much so that, if you don't add a period at the end of one of your lines, it means something else.
>two seasons in one day
the good.
>looked through, a waxing moon
the bad.
> bends to its powers
the ugly
>he didn't understand it because he's old
Okay. Learn your craft more.

It does not read well mate. I can see the point you're making but it's definitely a bit hacky.

>crippled or tight
Been getting into Larkin?

He looked on towards the abyssal forest that neared towards them observing the mass of shivering verdigris leaves and then looked back as the storm cracked and howled in endless repetition. It's bleak depths were less like a storm and more like a blackened castle of astonishing magnitude. It's flashes of lightning were like shrieking bolts from a host of cross-bow wielding titans. It's towers rose and fell, rose and fell, rose and fell, and they rose and then they fell again and again and again, never ever ending and from the great plumes of solid black came the conquering rain that pelted the land like rocks flung from hidden beams and billowing rafters. "Do you think God is angry with us?" The man asked," looks like he brought us a damn siege! Alright then, on you go, we need to find some place to hide this night. This ones going to be bad to us..."
As he spoke there was a crack of lightning that smacked nearby and a great flame fractured the earth as if some hell beast had ripped it's flaming body from the ground and sent it's burning pieces across the land in a shower of mineral and fire. The horse shrieked and raced away from the blast, nearly throwing the man from him like an unwanted doll as he did. The man clung to the horse with fear and desperation for in the moment when the lightning had reached down to the earth in its murderous arc he had become like a child absorbed in fear. When he regained his senses, he was unable to ascertain how long he had lost them. It may have been just a moment, but it could have been an hour for all he knew. When overcome by panic time becomes a forgotten quantity.
"Alright boy, you had your moment! Get your shit together!" the man called to his horse as it charged through the alien wood where the trees stood like faltering sentries trembling at an inestimable adversary with death on his mind and not even a dream of remorse to pester him when he slept over their lacerated corpses.

The rain caught them, it pelted them and froze them and would not allow them one second that was free from profuse suffering. The trees ripped at the companions manically and blindly and with so much ferocity that the man could have sworn that those trees had hated him with all the resentment and jealousy of a spurned lover. "Do you think that nature can hate, friend? This storm is making me wonder." The man stared in wonder and fear as heavens blitzkrieg shot it's bolts into the forest with a ruthless fusillade, blasting the lambasted topiary into moribund bodies of burnt coppice and shrubs. One by one they fell, like soldiers in a line, like stars falling from the sky, like rocks as they descend from the mountain onto the climbers unwary heads, like an acrobat that missed his trapeze, like a drunkard who has lost his footing, as the man watched each of the trees meet its destruction, he saw that they fell in their own way. "Much like people," he thought.
The explosion came right behind him. In a hawk dive upon its prey, the lightning arced across the sky like some luciferian serpent and launched itself into a great oak so fast as to be instantaneous. In one moment of incineration the tree burst asunder and threw out thousands of shrapnel bits like tiny flying daggers. The man was thrown from the blast like a tepid boney leaf and hit the ground hard. He lay motionless. The horse became like a paranoid demon and charged off as fast as the storm wind, leaving the man alone where he lay, small and vulnerable in the shattering maelstrom. He was bleeding from the head in a light trickle that washed away in the rain into the mud and he lay there, dreamlessly, motionlessly, slightly breathing, but so slight... If he lived, it would be a miracle.

In and after 10pm
the tube rush had its round
and circle lines slow down
at quiet stations.
The lights of streaming alleys
from the seats,
orange haze and hailing
taxis in the streets.
Distant night buses,
when night commuting, stare
at buildings strange to sleep.

Your very first sentence reads awkwardly. Why not say, "one man rode out from the shadows of the rain." ? Then the second sentence is redundant (arguably) as it can be inferred that the raising of one's head allows them to look forward.

I skimmed the rest: so purple it suffers from thrombosis! ok not that purple, but you could definitely tighten it up a lot

Be lethal, please.

>There are possibilities here. Possibilities, that's all. Now don't get too excited. You're getting to know James, who knows Shirley, who knows Sharon. James is the boyfriend of Shirley, and Shirley is a good friend of Sharon. You could almost call yourself a friend of James at this point. Could you? Maybe not. Just calm down for a second. James Ramirez has hung out twice with you and your friends. James Ramirez is the boyfriend of Shirley Schumacher. And Shirley Schumacher is a good friend of Sharon Flannery. A good friend? Seems like it. Well, a friend. There really are possibilities here. James Ramirez is a friend of Sharon Flannery too. No, no. You don't know that. Maybe he secretly hates her. But it is highly doubtful that Shirley Schumacher hates Sharon Flannery. Sharon Flannery is a nice name. It is one of the nicest names you have heard, and you used to hate the name "Sharon." This is all very good. Tomorrow you can go for a walk. Yes, that sounds like a plan. Get some of this energy out. A nice walk. And plenty of nice things to think about. It hasn't been like this in a while. And it is spring outside. Who cares about the pollen. Tomorrow you can go on a nice walk. It is much too late to do that today. It is 10:54 PM. You ought to get to bed. But there will be some nice things to think about as you fall asleep. Plenty of nice names. It hasn't been like this in a while. A year, maybe? Even the worrying is nice. It is nice just like it was before. You can worry that James Ramirez has already begun to secretly hate you. A great thing to worry about. No guilt, no shame, no fear, no philosophizing, nothing pitch-black. What a good type of worrying. It really hasn't been like this in a while. The best kind of worrying. So adolescent. Maybe there is still some time left for adolescence.

[REDACTED]

Earth, the mother of birth,
pregnant, sleeping on her stomach,
cuts the moon's umbilical—
chords dissonantly ring
around the rosy the pocketfuls
of gold coins dredged from the deep.
She leaves grocery bags on the door
and spanks dead children
whenever they tiptoe in the lukewarm dark
imagineering the padded walls as lullabies.
The frenzied skullduggery sunk courts
settle centuries old lost dogs and cats
libel suit; Jehosaphat's gavel bites
the teeth off a hung jury of mice
breathing one minuet together
under mother's bosom, apart.

I wouldn't say to rebuild the whole thing, but I also wouldn't say throwing a few ands in there would fix it.
You just have to plug things in and read it to yourself. I know that's vague. I'm sorry

Just read more. Learn metre, write poems just for the sake of metre, and then try some
nas is also a rapper, not a poet.

>He looked on towards the abyssal forest that neared towards them observing the mass of shivering verdigris leaves and then looked back as the storm cracked and howled in endless repetition
Congrats, you've already lost your reader's will to read anything else.
Fix this, please. I literally beg you. You have some decent stuff thrown in there. Salvage it
But you need to make things simpler. Not everything needs to be described. Be humble.

the good:
Distant night buses,
when night commuting, stare
The bad:
??
The ugly:
??

Not bad. I guess the rest was just sort of "eh" to my mind. There are words out there with greater effect. Seek them

Here's my critique:

>There are possibilities here. Possibilities, that's all

>>There are possibilities here. Possibilities, that's all.
No.
>Now don't get too excited
No.
>You're getting to know James, who knows Shirley, who knows Sharon. James is the boyfriend of Shirley, and Shirley is a good friend of Sharon. You could almost call yourself a friend of James at this point. Could you? Maybe not. Just calm down for a second. James Ramirez has hung out twice with you and your friends. James Ramirez is the boyfriend of Shirley Schumacher. And Shirley Schumacher is a good friend of Sharon Flannery. A good friend? Seems like it.
I don't care.

>What a good type of worrying. It really hasn't been like this in a while. The best kind of worrying. So adolescent.

Me no like. Me think it bad. Me hate reading this.

aesthetically abhorrent.
You made English look like German.

That aside. . .
It's got interesting imagery. This one's just too odd for me I guess

I'm this guySo I'm not completely hopeless, then? I'm aware that my writing could use some tightening up, I just don't know when to hold back and when to go all in. My intention was to come up with something melodic and rhythmic and I'd like to develop that style I had in mind. I'm still a long way away from perfecting that style, a very long way, but any specific points or tips that you would have would be great and I'd be grateful to receive them

Hate Sand/ It should be banned.

We're running out of sand I've heard
but I don't care, I know its there.
It lines the foreign coasts
and between you and me,
let river bends and beds
go bare, empty desert air.
Undo the undersea.

No need to be sorry. You've been very helpful.

too short to really care, but fix your caesura at line 5. Ruined it for me
not at all hopeless. Though, I am worried when you say you don't know when to hold back. Writing is streamed, not crafted. At least it shouldn't be.

Biggest tip to give you right now is to patch your obscure words. Yes, I know you know what they mean. I do too, as many intelligent people do, but Joe doesn't, and Joe may like to read.
Also, some of your word choice ruins the mood. I chuckled at the pinata mention. Just really make it feel natural.

>well past noon
I don't know, 17 minutes isn't so much time in my opinion

I'm not feeling the jumbled reporter's writing style here. Can't say much else

first time, i'm no good but:

Twelve-seventeen, well past noon; yesterday’s rain still imbrued the sidewalk. A trio of spiders lay overturned in the grass, legs clasped inward in silent sermons. Some blades of grass remain caught under the husk-abdomens. They wait.
The final canals of rainwater resign themselves to the edge of curb, whistling through grates into the sewer. The deep bellow of lighthouse foghorn, a rich A note trumpeted far behind the scene. A fellow in a bright blue car had passed through here, hours ago, when the oldest recorded human died at one hundred seventeen in her rocking chair, but he heard nothing of it and would not until the following day. This thought would reoccur to him in the future, each time the same story, sometimes shrouded in the bleeding heart of nostalgia, but occasionally thundered by the bitter horn of real doom. He vows to beat one seventeen, by a long shot. The foghorn thundered on, the water trickles.

Well this not my first draft, this is my second. I could show you an excerpt of my first. It's very unpolished, but it's also simpler than the second, so it may sound more natural.

i screwed up on some of the punctuation, revising that might help with clarification/readability

anyway thanks for the comments

Letters lean left and right
down the drain and up the flight
of stairs strewn with lego pieces
married to my mother's nieces
like a kite to keys and streams of light
that hide away at day and live at night
buried with treasures tried and true
across and deep that yonder blue
where origami hearts fold and fold
whispering deadly stories now untold
till the youthful ears of children turn
towards the mighty voices of the urn
that dies away with laughter new
and sinks down further yonder blue.

here's the beginning to a novel i'm working on. please don't hold anything back in critiquing it:

A relatively small sphere of rock and iron orbited a comparatively large sphere of bright fission-fueled gases somewhere on the outskirts of a collection of clusters of similar spheres called by certain lifeforms the Milky Way®. On this relatively small sphere of rock and iron, during the year of our Lord 2020, there lived two lifeforms who identified, quite colloquially, as human; however, rather than human, these two featherless bipeds preferred to present themselves with the appellations, Tom and Jerry, respectively. To them, and their 7 and a half billion fellow members of the species Homo sapiens, binomial nomenclature proved to be of the utmost moral, and legal, importance. Coincidentally, Tom and Jerry happened to have been making their way through a second, more microcosmically oriented, milky way of sorts: the birthplace of milk chocolates, the mecca of cheese, a land nobly named Schweizerische Eidgenossenschaft. To foreigners, it was simply called Switzerland.
At this time, they were traveling by locomotive through this archipelago of cottontail mountaintops towards their fateful destination, a small tucked-away town called Gstaad, endeavoring to complete a work of moving pictures, known as a documentary film. It is here their story begins.

II/II

“Tom, we can’t open the film with such an obvious exposition dump.”
“That’s not what I’m saying. I’m just saying we should provide some sort of wide-angle point-of-view to open it up. Something that provides quick context.”
“I get it, but we don’t have the budget to rent a helicopter, and we don’t have David Attenborough’s voice to legitimize that kind of shot. We agreed: we’re making a quaint film, therefore we should open it quaintly.” Jerry let the point settle, looking out of the train window at the now quickly moving scene of Swiss countryside. “Anyway, it’s called The Land of Milk and Money, and it’ll be advertised as a film about Switzerland. People aren’t going to need a bird’s-eye-view of Switzerland to know it’s about Switzerland.”
“That’s not what I’m saying. I’m just saying rather than begin it in media res with a shot of the cheese factory or the cow-fights, we begin with some footage of the country itself, a montage of Swiss things, something big.”
“Okay, but I thought that we agreed that people, whether they know it or not, are far more interested in the particular, rather than the quote-unquote universal. The high-res picture comes after we give something specific for the audience to grab on to.”

these types of things are unecessary
>called by certain lifeforms
>to complete a work of moving pictures, known as a documentary film
>identified, quite colloquially, as human
i understand that its intended to be a sort of alien disinterested abnormal type of feel but the whole Sartre pointing-out-absurd-concepts thing never plays out well

Here's a short story I'm working on.

Why use the words "relatively" and then "comparatively" when you already have the words "small" and "large" which imply the same fucking thing? Get rid of relatively and comparatively.

>however, rather than human, these two featherless bipeds preferred to present themselves with the appellations, Tom and Jerry, respectively
>Tom and Jerry, respectively
That's not how you use "respectively." There are not two things to distinguish between, you just present two things so there's nothing to attribute "respectively" to.

And why the fuck are they called Tom and Jerry? Cat and mouse? Cheese and chocolate? What the fuck are you even talking about?

Scrap this and start over with something less pretentious. Also check your comma use, you have a lot of useless commas.

I'm being overly harsh because you requested it but seriously this is bad.

Your dialogue is much better than your intro.

Consider making this your intro, the intro you have now is too messy

the first line of dialogue was meant to act as a response to the italicized proto-prologue (which is a macro zoomed into micro cosmic viewpoint of the events to come, and meant to be seen as funny (though the execution clearly needs some work based on your and the other anons comments here: )).

Anyway, I really appreciate the feedback: any and everyone's responses are different and equally important.

Ah ok, that makes more sense now. That is pretty funny.

But yeah the execution needs some work lol

get on with it
pull the lever
sling the rope
slap the pink
spank the drought
touch the beams
dream the seas
can the breasts
slam the wheat
back the front
break the back
gut the krill
make the bat
mull the mill
tear the shore
yank the chin
chain the links
skin the yard
plant the vine
nab the tune
and tie the nought
all before they
find you out

break it, the kit kat, split it among the herd
of troglodytes called Earthlings or
Terrans tearing a warpath along pieces
of peace betwixt twin Twix pieces
and snap into it like a slim's factoid cap
drink and snuff up some tobacco
designed for insufflation by the nariz
in France's idea of Niger or Australia
before it had a name or live game
liek Duck Hunter autocorrected to fowl play
before arm's get up for armageddon
sometime in the near future or present
3 thousand so-so years ahead or sew
after we reap grimly with norMandy and Bill
Clinton, where good and evil are just words
spoken by cousins named Good and Evil
underneath the cracks of morality in sin
where light can only outshine the darkness
inside the recycled man of heartless tin

>yesterday's rain still imbued the sidewalk
Awkward, and it doesn't make sense because hardened concrete can not be "imbued" by water.

I'd pick apart each sentence individually, but they're all awkward and just awful overall. None of them seem to have any importance. You also seem to attempt to personify everything in an, I assume, attempt to describe it well, but it just ends up being awkward and juvenile. There are also a ton of grammatical errors/spelling errors and words accidentally left out. You should really proofread thoroughly before posting.

I hate it. all of the forced rhymes just makes the poem seem like something written in a middle-school English class. If you insist on rhyming, at least learn what half-rhyming/slant rhyming is to make it less cringe and juvenile.

I read this like it was some heavy metal screamo lyrics where they scream out each line along with a guitar and pause briefly in-between for dramatic effect. This doesn't seem like a poem to me. I'm not really sure what you're going for, but I don't like it.

It's not that bad. I don't really like the metaphors used, though. And the poems meaning isn't really as deep or profound as the poems language tries to be.
Here's mine, let me know what you think; more thoughts for a section of my book that i'm working on than a refined passage, but I think it's alright. Might change the phrasing of a couple sentences to not be so long-winded for better flow.

A cross-hatch against a cross-hatch of stars in a line against a line in nothingness and nothingness and something. Something? Something—it is there sometimes, in some centuries in some years but it is not here in this year or this century else I would not be a blue line echoing against the dark. Else I would not be a misguided star searching in that nothingness for that something and finding something only to be cast away by a cold gravity into the cold void devoid of something. If it could just be something in that void once more! If I could just be something in that void: in this darkness against these decaying boards against decaying boards separating me and father.

you are 2 dimensional
like paper, loose leaf
you hold your x and y, but no z
you are nothing but pen strokes
folded into wax covered boats

yet you feel and you think
you love poetry and the ice rink
your opinions are just
your cause is a must
for without protest,
how will we change

you write music
note by note
you are art, music, science
more than a paper boat

on a screen we see just blood and propaganda
counterarguments, but not enough stanzas
you are real, you are blood
you are flesh, you are bone
my soul yearns to meet yours
no brother is alone

run with the bulls
board the paper boat

*
so,

i’m going to need you to suspend your hostility toward hippies for a moment, because when i say something, like for example, “hair can contain positive and negative energy” and you roll your eyes like what i am saying is worthless, is unbelievable, is not applicable to you or anyone else’s lives, let me ask you if you have ever heard or experienced what the phrase “good hair day” means.

because maybe we are talking about the same thing, maybe you already know what i mean, you just haven’t thought of it this way. maybe looking at things as possessing energy is an obvious fact we overlook, maybe our moods determine this energy more than we want to believe.

*

feelings are powerful energy
how we translate them into the real world is important

depending on the feeling we have
our translation or lack thereof can cause the feeling to amplify or dissipate

like two waves crashing against each other

when we have a feeling
how we choose to express or not express that feeling will determine whether or not we release it or keep it
like a bird, like a heavy block of marble.
do we keep this feeling and tend to it, do we release this feeling into the world?

if this feeling is good then, please take up a chair and carve a beautiful statue to yourself that you may share with others, please tend to the bird and it will sing for you and will sing for others for it is happy and cared for

if this feeling is bad, please bring the bird to a window so it can leave you and the smell of unclean birdcage may be swept out with it, please pay no mind to the large slabs of heavy rock along the path, for there will be many and you do not need to carry any of them.

how you choose to express your feelings will determine how those feelings continue to be expressed by you.

do you understand?

*

i think the term you're looking for is "bad hair day," and it almost always refers to the superficial aspect of someone's hairdo, not state of wellbeing.

I like this, but probably needs the context for a full critique. That said, I know you're trying for the repetition, but I feel it might slightly be overdone, perhaps change some of the words. Solid ending though.

Here's a poem of mine, wanted to write a haiku but with a limit on words rather than syllables (I think I read that idea somewhere, but no idea where anymore...)

Autumnal leaves, crackling, flee trees
While native leaves cling, enduring in desperation —
Dear, my heart attempts both.

A publisher near where I live only wants LGBT submissions, seriously, so thought of this short story:

>A struggling writer is on his way to submit his work, its about the Scottish Highlands.
>We follow him on his walk, he walks past a GAY PRIDE parade, and is disgusted.
>You get the impression he is a homophobe.
>Reaches the publish house, his work is denied.
>"sorry we're not really looking for this, it's LGBT+ only, I don't think you satisfy our criteria, we're looking for pro-lgbt, pro-minority gender fiction"
>Steps back outside, his boyfriend is waiting in his car to take him home.

What do you think?

They'd probably reprimand you for being a smarmy smartass, though the point of your writing would be completely true.

Here's my work of the night:

Devon sat outside feeling nothing. No letter, no call, no nothing. He was a failure. Dancing blades tickled his resting hands, but he did not notice them. "I'm stuck here forever," he thought," tell even that is taken from me. Then I'll be stuck nowhere." A cricket chirped by him, but he did not hear it.
He got up, reached for his discarded hat and put it on his shaven head. At 5'11 he could almost be considered tall, and with close set eyes and a nose like a squash he was not handsome. Devon tread slowly through the empty field. He looked at nothing and made no sound. All sights to be seen and all sounds to be heard he had experienced many times before, so the beet red sun that sat cusped on the horizon behind pinkish clouds or in bloom dandelions that fell apart in the breeze had no effect on him. Their wonder was undone by their repeating of the cycle. For a man like Devon, the idea of an unbreakable cycle was horror itself.

stop projecting your sad lives into your characters

It's Veeky Forums

you need to be more descriptive, blades of what? Knives? 'Sitting outside on the grass'. You do what I do, and that's assume the reader knows what you know. Spit it out, son.

Stop projecting your ideal of yourself, it's just sad and so easy to spot. Create an original character.

stop using so many words you think are cool and start describing events properly.

> He reached for the glove on his right hand with his left and pulled it off, then he reached forward with his naked open palm and he petted his steed.

First you add some stupid unnecesary crap about how to remove gloves, then you proceed to tell how he positions his palm to pet the horse, but dont even say how he pet it, gently? firmly?

You're too focused on using big words making you lose coherence.
You can add semantics later, knowing words doesnt make a good writer, being able to clearly express ideas does.

Dont use literally incorrectly when writing please.
"literally retarded" "not like down syndrome retarded"

so? which one is it

pastebin.com/pfrrbJRD

Your friendly, neighbourhood Shillderman, reporting in.

J N Morgan

>Living amongst the Dead
Realistic and nitty-gritty zombie survival novel with emphasis on survivalism. Proper firearm terminology and handling.
>When her No means Yes
Short erotica novel, practically a novella, easily my worst-selling.
>Firearm Valhalla
Action and sort of post-apocalyptic novelette, only 16,500 words.
>Another One Please, to Dull the Pain
Drama novella, wrote it in the span of less than 5 days, I think it turned out pretty good.
>Living amongst the Dead: Dark Days
Sequel to Living amongst the Dead.
>3rd instalment to the Living amongst the Dead series
Working on it, about half way finished, wrote over 4,000 words yesterday which is quite good. Quite a few racial issues are being addressed thus far and I'm kind of thinking of including a Muslim character to see how my take on Sharia Law and all that nonsense goes. I'm more of a 'discovery writer' than an 'outline writer', so I just kind of take an idea and roll with it when I write.

Can start copy/pasting one of my books here if anyone would like to critique and/or talk shit about it. As for OP's pic, I've actually been checking out David Foster Wallace's interviews, and he seems like a pretty cool guy. Reminds me a bit of myself, particularly the twitching and, to an extent, the social paranoia.

Pic related is the old cover for LatD. Yup, pretty damn basic, I think my new one is a bit better but I have to be honest; I still kind of like this one.

I have no idea why anyone would want to read, let alone write, any of those turgid genre-fiction novels.
What motivates you?

I bore holes into her cheeks with my dumb stare, the moisture of my eyes soaked up by the maniacal farce of the foul display before me.

Once again, she inhaled another gulping mouthful of liquid cheese.

After the last of her smooth dairy fists descended, she plopped the can back on the shelf and continued to scan the display, then let out a pained gasp.

“It’ll be the death of us Bready… these endless fucking rows of comestible wank. Might as well liquidate it all and blast it directly into her mouth through a tube.” Murray whispered to me contemptuously, as he slapped a pack of king-size Roadies over the scanner and into a large paper bag.

The woman, her limpid, crusty brown hair now stiff with flecks of splashing cheddar, continued to gently hover down the aisle on her scooter, unfazed by the repugnance of her drive-by refuelling.

“I swear to you, if it’s not a council health indictment that drops her in the pit, a sizeable solar flare would burst her heart like a plum in a centrifuge.” He chuckled, passing a small stack of change and a note awkwardly to a small man whose boyish features, thick rimmed glasses and heavy stubble made him somewhere between 10 and 45.

“Thanks for shopping with us, godspeed and have a good day.” He added drily, as the stubby man wobbled off with his cigarettes.

“What do you mean a solar flare? I'm pretty sure that's not how solar flares work.” I responded.
Carefully I watched the woman tenderly finger open a box of Schweaties with curiosity.

“Y'know, solar flares. At any time one of those bad boys could pop off and emit this huge gravitational pressure on the earth.” He paused a moment, then punched in the number of a stubborn bar code for a danish pastry.

He continued, “but by the time it actually gets here, only the febrile, delicate among us will implode. Everyone else will just get this crazy migraine. I saw it on Kamflesch TV the other night.”

“I see. Is this like yesterday's dog Hitler thing?” I replied, wiping residual sleep from my tear ducts and blinking under the harsh ceiling lights.

“Man you don’t even know the half of it. I’m telling you, Hitler and his boys trained so many dogs during World War 2-"

"-Boys? Really?" I interrupted.

"Fine. Nazis, whatever." .

"Anyways the dogs were trained to sniff out and attack Jews so often that it became a genetically inherited trait over the years, passed down over the generations. There are still dogs even in this very town that have that hard-wired anti-semitism.” He trailed off brusquely.

A woman Murray was serving cleared her throat in disapproval.

"What's your problem? I didn't say it was a good thing, some of my best friends are Jewish... I just don't want them to get mauled by dogs is all." He added to her, incredulously.After staring at her for a few moments in silence, she soon scampered off in a fuss.
(1/2)

I love to write, and I very much enjoy fiction. I also have a passion for firearms and thus far I've managed to include them to one extent or another in all of the books. In spite of the tragic nature of its use in 'Another One Please', I find it quite comical, because the main character knows basically nothing about firearms. In /k/ terms, he's a lifelong noguns.

I also have a passion for survivalism, and have been into zombies since I was a young teen, so that explains why I started out with zombie survival. I've wanted to write a realistic and survivalism-focused novel for years and years, finally got around to doing so last October and now it's soon to become a trilogy of sorts but I'm certain I'll be writing more instalments once this book is finished.

To each their own, I guess.

He turned to me again.

"Honestly ask Dumpy, one of Mr. Benson's pugs got into the synagogue down on Finch and went batshit... Went right for Rabbi Peter's face he said" Murray added once more, mimicking the dog's jaws by jabbing his hands in Bready's face.

"For some reason I get the feeling the Nazi's weren't using pugs as instruments of war. Not even sure one could reach Rabbit Peter's face." I replied.

"One could definitely bite a Rabbi's dick off though, probably why they lost the war." He said defiantly.

"Why did you feel the need to call it his Rabbi -" I began, before hearing the screech of tires on tired linoleum.

In a sudden and largely baffling movement, the floating woman revved her scooter and drove full speed into the confectionery shelving before the till. She was now directly facing the counter where Bread and Murray stood slouched and listless. Staring deep into their souls, her mouth became agape and slightly canted, lips caked with an unknown sauce.

After a few uncomfortable seconds, she lifted a shaking fist towards the two of them, followed by a bizarre, hollow hiss that fell out of her mouth like a gentle breeze.

“Can… can I help you maam?” Murray probed.

The hissing grew louder, and her squamous, flaking skin began to fly from her arm like a wet dog in the sunlight as she shook it with more intensity. Another pause. Then, the noise began to morph into a moist gurgle, rising and catching on her throat until she abruptly coughed and dribbled a thick black liquid down her front.

“What… the fuck. Is that.” I gawped, rushing over to her.

"Woah, woah, woah, Bready slow down... she could be toxic." He warned.

On closer inspection, her eyes had become inky and filled to the ducts, as if the retching fluid had been diverted directly to her brain. Her head began slowly tilting back and the liquid ebbed and flowed once more from her mouth, softly at first and then jilting with every gasped breath.

"Maam." I probed, poking her shoulder with my finger.

The skin gave way as I pressed against it, breaking apart like film on a day old bowl of soup. A thicker, rubbery black substance lay underneath and began to creep out.

Before long, the skin began to crack and separate like tectonic plates, perniciously deconstructing and sparsely covering this Pangaeac blob.

In a matter of seconds, she had devolved into total amorphousness.

Murray and I stood silently and then slowly backed away from the nightmarish puddle of black covering the mobility scooter. On the far side of the puddle the furthest reaches of the liquid began sidling itself, almost autonomously, into a small crack under the shelving unit.

The sound of sirens blared outside, and as we turned to face the automatic doors, an almighty SCCCCHKKKKWWWWWUMP snapped our heads forward to find to an immaculate floor and scooter, as the last of the puddle descended forcefully down the hole like a trapped octopus through a slit in a ship's hull.

(2/2) idk.

Just did some more writing. It seems that I consistently am in the mood to write early in the mornings, even sometimes before coffee. Reached the 40,000 word mark on my 6th book, the 3rd in the Living amongst the Dead series. It's coming along quite well, lots of stuff happening, one of the characters has unfortunately died but it's pretty inevitable for stuff like that to happen. Another might die before the book is finished but I dunno, we'll see, I have some things in mind.

I woke up from the same sound that had roused me for the past two months. From the noise of the people working the morning shift when they scraped and shovelled the snow from the nearby gates. Occasionally one of them would hit the chain link fence and let off a metallic rattle. Not exactly a pleasant alarm clock but it did its job. “Hey Stan, wake up and let’s get moving I’m freezing my fucking ass off” Cooper bellowed. “I’m already up, give me a few seconds.” I replied and zipped open my sleeping bag. The stale freezing air of the tent hit me instantly, it had been unusually cold lately and not getting any warmer. I fumbled around for my clothes, the aviator jacket Cooper gave me, the pants from home I’d padded with newspapers and my beat-up sneakers. I zipped open the tent, stepped outside and looked at Cooper. As per usual he was wearing his old army jacket, two sets of jeans and a giant pair of homemade boots. “Took you long enough dipshit, if we move out now we’ll barely make it in time.”

Ol' Greasy Fingers. Ralphie. Moonface. He went by many names. But when he kicked in the door of that dilapidated pub by the river, he was Dan, plain and simple.
“Fuck me, its that cunt again”, said the barmaid.
“Awright, darlin'” slurred Dan, tumbling toward the bar and catching it for support. “Pint of ale, would you kindwy.” He gave her a gummy grin and he slid a moist twenty-pound note over the counter.
The young girl picked it up with a pair of chopsticks and stuffed it into the register.
“Keep the change, luv.” said Dan, smacking his lips.
The girl poured the pint soberly, and handed it to Dan.
“Cheers” he said, and walked precariously over to his usual corner, a faint smell of cheap Shiraz wafting behind him.
He slumped into his chair flatulently and slammed his pint on the table, the foamy liquid spilling over onto his grubby hands. He threw his head back and screamed.
“Nonono No – No place I'd rather beeee! Nonono No!”
The barmaid went on cleaning glasses. The patrons largely ignored him. Though some looked up and curled their upper lips, most had grown accustomed to this. The year was 2027 and the world had gone to shit.
“Proper fockin' good tune, that.” Dan said to no-one in particular, sinking further into his seat. “Back in my day we had some proper fockin' bangers.”
He gulped his pint down in one, slammed it down and shouted: “Another!”
Wordlessly, the barmaid brought him another pint of Farage Ale. Dan held out another twenty-pound note and groped her slim fingers as she took it.
“I was your age, once” he said. “Before all this. Before they come and took over th'bloody country. Before they took away our knives and forks and replaced them with chopsticks. Before the nanny state.”
The girl pulled away and took her place behind the bar again.
“Don't fritter it away.” he called. “You get one chance. That's from me to you, that.”
He pulled out a thick brown stick from his pocket.
“S'pose you don't even know what one of these are” he said, brandishing the object. “We used to smoke these in every pub in the land, before they took them away. Lit them up and sucked them down. We didn't know why, but we didn't need to.”
A glint in his eye of times past.
“We did things for the hell of it back then. Before all the rules. Before the Chinese came. We did it for freedom.”
All eyes were on him now. No-one dared speak of the Chinese overlords.
“Got this from a friend at Callais. Sometimes all a man has to do to start a revolution is to start a fire.”
He lit a match.
“Down with the nanny state.”
An explosion so loud it was almost noiseless.

First day students at AAME are always filled with a precarious cocktail of both empowered self belief and shit-their-pants fear of the unknown. Each student, as they pull up in the passenger seats of their parent's cars and unload their various instruments and equipment, has a kind of glassy-eyed distant gaze, not dissimilar to new recruits on their first day of boot camp. There's like a chilled heat hanging in the air around the building, a tension that grips the parents and the students alike, and undoubtedly the staff too, though you wouldn't know it from looking. The air around the building on this particular day has a smell of sickly freshness, sweet pangs of lavender drifting along from the gardens out front on a light breeze, soothing but also slightly jarring and misplaced, tickling the nostrils harshly. It is the first thing P. Pritchard notices as he enters the school grounds, everything else sort of refuses to take any meaningful form, the nerves making it too hard to process anything. He sits awkwardly in the passenger seat of his Mum's Volvo, gripping his saxophone case to his chest as if it were protecting him. The sun's light forms annulus shapes that glare through the window, catching his eyes in a way that makes him want to sneeze. He squints as he tries to take in the world around him. The school building is monolithic in a Neo-Gothic sort of way, sort of church-esque, with its swathes of sandstone, and its arched portal with doorways separated by an imposing trumeau, and its large windows that stretch along the facade like shadows, and its jagged parapet that sits like a lofty crown on top. There is an alien element to its layout though, a large glass section that protrudes from the rear, honeycombed with large reflective panels that gleam in multiple colours. It looks like an infestation, like something has dug into the school’s skin and taken nest there, ballooning out in a kaleidoscopic cyst. P. Pritchard looks through the window of the car in slight awe, wide-eyed. Tons of kids, for whatever their age they are kids again here, all arming themselves up against one another, instruments in hand like weapons, trying to lessen their own frenzy of intimidation by imparting the same feeling onto their peers. They will soon learn that the American Academy of Musical Excellence is no place to exert yourself as in anyway superior; the tutors will see certain that everyone feels equally like one another, worms crawling helplessly in the dirt of Music Theory.

>its that cunt
>its
This is probably a typo, but just pointing it out, in case.
Overall, good slang/voice on the protagonist, it's silly but not cringey. "Particular" should be slurred, too many syllables, maybe "Par-tick-yalar", Great Expectations by Dickens has heaps of good representations of lower class twang. I'd enjoy it more if there were more repetition or nuance, your verbs are somewhat generic, but that's my only complaint. 7.5/10 enjoyable

>Also
Farage Ale lol, is this supposed to be Brexitland in 10 years?

>Here's mine, slightly similar:
medium.com/@JPosadiss/today-when-nuclear-revolution-began-99aaba1fde97

Thanks. I just smashed it out in 10 minutes last night for a friend of mine called Dan for a lark. The Farage ale was just a jab at my friend, who is obsessed with both Farage and Ale and complains about the "nanny state" e.g. how you can't smoke in pubs anymore.

>medium.com/@JPosadiss/today-when-nuclear-revolution-began-99aaba1fde97
>“Whether you like Minecraft or not,”

Kek. I like this daft hyperbolic dystopia type of writing borne out of exaggerated political memery. It's reminds me of some of Will Self's work. I'm not sure if there would be a market for a full novellette of this but I'd certainly read it myself.

Recently started working on a dictionary of historic slang. Pic related is the first page of the current (early) state.
I'd like to hear some critique on the design and the way I quote the sources.
At the front of the book there's a bibliography listing all the sources and their short names (A1, A2, B, B2, etc.) and I might change the short names later on, maybe even including years, so a short name might be "A10 1822".

And where would this be published?

Lets write a book together, a-user...

Hit me up if you're serious. I need to hone my writing chops.
[email protected]

Probably Buske, or maybe not at all. Does that really matter?

this has already been done. Neat idea, though. I looked into it and there are already 4 or so mass produced

Your citations cloud up the page, making it difficult to get at the substance. Some definitions (like the one for "blow off the groundsil") are nonsensical.

Obviously I'm currently gathering all the sources, so I can see who copied from whom and made which mistakes. If I just skipped those in the first place, the dictionary would be worthless.
You obviously have never looked into a good historic dictionary of an obscure language.

Youa re right, the definition of blow off the groundsil was missing a "you". Fixed that.

Rate my essay

Unreadable

"Humans are pattern seeking animals and we are adept at finding patterns whether they exist or not" (adapted from Michael Shermer). (title)

“If you put your baby tooth under your pillow, a tooth fairy will replace it with a reward at night.”

“Wow, what kind of reward mom?”

“Something you can use to get yourself some ice cream!”

“ICE CREAM, I want to go to bed now! *giggles*”

This is the start of a propensity to believe in patterns. The parent has done a good job in allowing the child into the right way of life. Whether believing in patterns is useful, is up to contention. This TOK question suggests that humans naturally seek patterns and propose that we are good at it, even though we know not whether the patterns exist. So we begin to wonder:1) Why do we search for patterns? 2) How adept are we at finding meaningful patterns? We will be exploring these nuances of the question in the AOK of mathematics and religious knowledge systems.

Are patterns in mathematics and religious knowledge systems inherently different? Simplistically, patterns are recurring phenomenon; these type of patterns are prominent in mathematics. An example of this are arithmetic sequences in math, which is defined as a string of numbers having the same difference between any two successive numbers (e.g. 3, 6, 9, 12). These type of patterns are less meaningful than patterns which we ascribe a certain meaning to. For example, a pattern can be a certain experience that causes us to believe in something. If someone felt uneasy when he was somewhere dark when he was young, and experienced something that he thought to be connected to the supernatural, he would likely believe in ghosts. Succinctly, there are two types of patterns in these AOKs.

More like ass-ay can I get a high five?

Why do humans seek patterns? One reason for this is it makes our lives easier. Imagine doing a different job every day, the inconsistency of such a life would challenge even the greatest of men! Patterns make our life easier as it helps us in our future endeavors either by allowing us to prepare beforehand or use it to our advantage. In earthquake prediction, seismologists identify geophysical patterns that might precede a large earthquake to be able to alert the public of impending calamities. Based on previous patterns of the sky in her life, a housewife will know that it is about to rain when the sky turns dark and therefore not dry her laundry outside that day. On the other hand, mathematicians seek patterns simply for the beauty of it. Say you are given the problem of finding the sum of the first 1000 numbers. You could arduously add the numbers: 1 + 2 = 3, 3 + 3 = 6, 6 + 4 = 10, etc. But if you realise that you could pair the numbers front to back: 1 + 1000 = 1001, 2 + 999 = 1001, etc. so that we get 500 pairs of numbers that sum to 1001, you could easily find the summand of the numbers, which is 500x1001=500500. We can therefore say, that the sum of the first n integers is ½ n (n + 1). The beauty of this way of counting is not only entrenched in its ability to ease computation, but the power to generalise for multitudinous numbers of n. To conclude, people search for patterns to make their lives easier and for the beauty of them.

In religious knowledge systems however, people search for patterns in order to assert their beliefs. I find that every time I pray, my worries start to alleviate. This is one of the main reasons why I started believing in God; I have faith that He is with me when I praise him. But a logician would laugh at my WOK which led me to know God, for faith to him, is based on little evidence. If he were an atheist, escape not he the inclination to search for patterns as he is likely to find patterns to disprove God! Based on these two examples, we have found out that we find patterns to prove that we are right. Does the fact that we chase patterns, independent if they exist or not, tells us we value favorable societal views on ourselves? Is the quest for seeking patterns intrinsic,or imbued as a need to seem superior to others? We all like being correct, but why do we feel this way? It could be because of the emotions we feel whenever we are right. For if the next time my worries ease after I pray, I would be happy to know that this pattern exists and this will in turn strengthen my belief in God, and cause me to find more patterns. This cyclic relationship between patterns and emotion causes humans to endlessly find patterns, for if he is right, he would be perceived as intelligent and receive a boost of ego, but if he is wrong, his perceived intelligence may fall but its cost is marginal compared to what he could gain from finding a meaningful pattern, so onward he goes on his quest of finding patterns!

r8 poem

to lie with you on rainy days
your head resting on my shoulder
convinces me in many ways
of things inside me that are older

At this point all you're doing is marketing

Some may say since the force that compels us to seek patterns are so strong, then we must be adept at finding them. But one should guard against such reasoning as “being adept” could be only one of many reasons we seek patterns. Yet the KQ “How adept are we at finding meaningful patterns?” is too substantial to overlook. In Michael Shermer’s TED talk “The pattern behind self-deception”, he states two types of errors humans are liable to make in the search for patterns. A Type I error, or a false positive, is believing a pattern is real when it is not (finding a nonexistent pattern), while a Type II error, or a false negative, is not believing a pattern is real when it is (not recognising a real pattern). An example of a Type I error is the pigeon in the box experiment as conducted by B. F. Skinner. Skinner put a pigeon in a box and it has to press one of two keys. The pigeon will try to figure out what the pattern is, and if you give him a little reward in the box — if you just randomly assign rewards such that there is no pattern — they will figure out any kind of pattern. And whatever they were doing just before they got the reward, they repeat that particular pattern. That's called superstition, and is something most of us are liable to, where we believe in good luck charms and associate certain attributes with dates such as friday the thirteenth being an unlucky date. To sum up, humans are not that adept at finding patterns as we have the tendency to believe in superstition that is connected to the supernatural or AOK of religion.

A counterclaim to this is that humans are adept at finding patterns because of the countless theorems mathematicians have discovered. An example is the fundamental theorem of arithmetic which states that “every integer greater than 1 either is prime itself or is the product of prime numbers, and that this product is unique, up to the order of the factors”. To elucidate this theorem, we will look at the numbers 2, 4 and 30. The theorem states that every number has a unique prime factorisation, which means that it is composed of a unique set of prime numbers. For the number 2, its prime factorisation is just 2 as it is a prime number itself. For the number 4 and 30, their prime factorisations are 2×2 and 2×3×5 respectively. The factorisations are unique as only these numbers have the number and order of prime factors when arranged in ascending order. This theorem is a great discovery and not obvious, but requires great perception and familiarity with various mathematical ideas. The theorem has led to the concept of the lowest common multiple which is useful in maximising efficiency such as being able to send a space probe to Mars that covers the least distance possible. Although we think of distance as static, this is not the case for outer space as the space probe would be under the influence of gravity of all the planets in the solar system. According to Oxford Dictionaries, a theorem is defined as “a general proposition not self-evident but proved by a chain of reasoning; a truth established by means of accepted truths”. From this definition, it is clear that it is no mean feat to discover theorems. Consequently, it implies that humans are adept at finding patterns.

If in religious knowledge systems we are incompetent at finding patterns but in mathematics the contrary is true, what then is the verdict to the answer of the aforementioned KQ? It can be said that we are adept at finding meaningful patterns if we work hard as one is only competent in finding patterns in mathematics if one dives himself deep into the ocean of its knowledge. For those who easily believe in superstition without the need for evidence, it is them who freely indulge in believing their made-up patterns.

We have identified that there are many reasons in wanting to search for patterns but one of the basis is for easing men’s life and inflating his ego and outwardly appearance. We have also determined that humans are adept at finding patterns if they put in the effort or else, their efforts to find patterns would most likely be like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. With this knowledge in mind, we must strive to search for meaningful patterns as they are the doorway to an easier life of regularity. But careful we must be towards being too routined by patterns for the flame of creativity and curiosity which fuelled us to find the patterns in the first place will be doused by our own actions, or inaction in the case of not realising this fact

The truck slammed on its breaks. There was a barricade rising through mist. Rolls of tires and red clad children emerging. The truck stopped close enough to see them clearly. Two figures began walking forward looking at them through windows. The right window lowered and Gluos’ head stuck out as he leaned on the horn and yelled, “get the fuck outa the road.”

He pressed into the horn for several more seconds as the pair bracketed the vehicle, Assistant rolled down her window and accepted a thin red scarf from a youth. The other walked up to Gluos now gripping the steering wheel.

“My name is Colum,” he said to Gluos while moving closer to whisper, “and we’ve been watching you.”

“You know it's nothing special to look away from the stream.”

Colum grinned, “it’s child's play.”

“You going to let me get on with this then?” He nodded up the road.

“We can’t stop you.”

They backed away from beside the truck. The third of their party, who was perched on the towering barricade, jumped off and away. The MOART squealed forward ramming the wall, tires tumbled, truck gained purchase on top and rolled over the pile of rubber circles. One of the youths threw a bottle as the MOART clambered over tires, it smashed on the roof. Gluos muttered, “mother fuck.”

There drove on, hands on the wheel. City all around. Blone below. Cruise missiles en route. Mayor’s hideout ahead. Gluos pressed down on the gas, cutting through fog, straight to the point on the map in his head, thinking of youths with faces of red.

In the gov district a launcher sitting in a parking lot fired a missile which had been designed at Wrathion Corporations and assembled in City by robots and people wearing hairnets working 3 hour shifts. It had been purchased by the Worldender government from a NorCon weapons brokerage, and set up last night. The disposable launcher spat out an eight and a half meter long missile with wings, vectoring turbo jet engines, and 500 pound conventional warhead. The CM-54 Scrub arched towards the Taipan and fell, steadied then coasted 4 meters above brown water at 1000 m/s. Mil sec scanners lost contact, until it arced back into the City. Rushing above streets, searing past windows, into a City square with mid-sized buildings and a MOART driving into the center.

The MOART stopped with a screech in the square facing the mayor’s hideout. Inside the truck Gluos put the sun visor down. Assistant said, “AI gives us 50 percent chance of being the target.”

The Scrub whipped its turbo jet, tilted its wings, and made a huge braking turn through the square slamming itself directly into a building that was still highlighted by the MOARTs windscreen as the Mayor’s hideout. All the windows in the building blew out, followed by an expanding fireball of exploding Scrub.

I embarrassingly tried to portray this used book store I go to. I suck shit at writing but at least I tried.

Figures danced, unclean and unshaven, around the labyrinthine wooden shelves, the door propped open with a single brick to the hot wet street. One shriveled lady fiddled with a radio set on top of a stack of lithographs while a younger man next to her with dusty clothes and a dusty face opened a roll of quarters into the register. The sound of coins filling the plastic interior of the cashbox coincided with the first bar of Mendelssohn's 'Reiterliede'. The shriveled lady, now satisfied with the functionality of the radio, returned to her perch on a tall stool behind the checkout counter. Her sedentary position obscured a few old engineering textbooks. The man began writing something with sharpie on a neon yellow strip of paper. The smell of yellowed paper was amplified by the fresh humidity, the stale nostalgic stench overwhelming any other odor. The lack of sufficient spacing between the roughened plywood bookcases could easily suffocate the claustrophobic. The languid browsers, perspiring in the wet heat of summer, stopped here for varied and distinct reasons, yet they all performed the same dance. Crouching to observe a heavy tome, head-tilting while perusing a wall of German plays, strategic movements neccessary to navigate the necropolis of a nearly dead medium of entertainment: these small performances were on display from all. And through this writhing pit of small-time commerce one could observe the behaviors displayed by drug addicts, neurotics, and the like. In the same way, this dusty hole-in-the-wall provides optimism and hope for those with a complete and irreversible addiction. And so the addicts will continue to dance.

pastebin.com/2cUJM9uj

A sleeping genius
Waiting to be told
His stories of nothing
Watch him glaze over the countless memory
of childhood and transition standing
on his own two feet

He stands there alone
His mind, a companion
but truly he's alone
Only the untold give him life
Meticulous, his worlds are perfect

I wrote this comic quatrain in a writing-meeting with friends. The subject of the poems was the guillotine. I will post the translation of the poem I wrote first, and then the Portuguese original.

The original is a quatrain of four equal rhymes – AAAA – and 12 poetic syllables per line.

Here the translation:

Who at one finger snap teaches the road to the afterlife?
Who makes of homicide an elegant ballerina?
Who tames in a gentle swan the beast of carnage?
It is the queen of France, the illustrious guillotine.

And here the original:

Quem num só estalo a estrada para o além ensina?
Faz do homicídio uma elegante bailarina?
Quem doma em cisne a besta da carnificina?
É a rainha da França, a ilustre guilhotina.

God, these critique threads are awful now. Everyone is just posting their shit without providing any critique for others. Which might be a blessing, actually, because most of this stuff is garbage. I usually give out a bunch of free critique, but I'm not going to bother with all of you that do not even show common courtesy.

Relax dude, I posted mine during a bus ride to work. I cant do a full critique right now, but i shan't let my dues be unpaid nor my unspoken ink be forgotten