Meave's Journal

March 18,1900


I start this journal to record my future and past experiences.

I have come a long way from when I last had a journal, and the problems
I wrote about then now seem petty and un-important.

Much has happened to me that I would not wish on any living person.
My existence seems to hold no meaning, I have tried to make something of this life,
to try to change it, but after so many years one grows tired of the whole institution.
There are three stages one goes through when one is made into what I am.

The first, hatred and denial ;
This is when one is so disgusted with your self for being what you are
that you try to destroy your self.

When you quickly learn that this is impossible or even rash is when you enter stage two:


Processing: This is when you stop and think to your self, why not make something of this life?
Why not make something with what you are given, change it,
make better use of it, this goes on for some years and then comes...

Stage three: Acceptance :
This is when you learn to live with what you are, you stop and think why are you struggling?
This life is like quicksand the more you struggle the quicker you will perish.
That is when you stop trying to be something you are not, and learn to live with your self.

I am but sixteen, I will never grow older,
I will never die,
I am frozen in time, yet I watch time pass me by.
I watch times change,
people grow old and die,
watch their children grow old and I remain the same.
I have gone through the stages listed above more then once and
each time differently.

At the moment I am at the last stage of acceptance.
I have accepted what I am, but it doesn’t change the fact, that life to me is bleak and empty
with out meaning.
I must go now,
but be assured that I will return,
I have much to write and sadly not enough paper.

Meave.

Hiya! Welcome to YWS. You should probably read through the rules and formatting things before posting your stories. Generally we try and make people review at least a couple works before posting their own, just for courtesy. It may sound kinda boring, but it helps your writing.
Check both of these threads for rules and formatting, 'cause your spacing is unusual for this forum:

topic714.html
topic14368.html

Now, onto your work. It's a neat concept, and I can see how you try and use your spacing in order to separate your thoughts, but that makes your prose choppy rather than flowing.
A few semantics things: you can leave the hyphen out of unimportant. Secondly, you should probably leave the space out before the semicolons and the colons. For example:

Stage three: Acceptance:

Rather than

Stage three: Acceptance :

Also, you might want to check out comma usage, because a lot of the time, you leave out commas around appositives. Like:

I have accepted what I am, but it doesn’t change the fact, that life to me is bleak and empty

Which should be:

I have accepted what I am, but it doesn’t change the fact, that life, to me, is bleak and empty

And:

I have much to write and sadly not enough paper.

Which should be:

I have much to write, and, sadly, not enough paper.

Final grammar note, this quote is a runon sentance:

I am but sixteen, I will never grow older,

I will never die,

I am frozen in time, yet I watch time pass me by.

It's actually, like, four sentances. Stick in some semicolons and you'll be good.


Another thing is, you might want to make it so that it reads Stage 1:, Stage 2:, Stage 3:, just for paralelism. It makes it easier to read and separate out when you introduce the stages the same way.


I really like your ideas and your writing! Keep going! =)

Thanks a lot, I never noticed what you explained before so it helps,thanks again!!

I like it. But what are they changing into? I want to read more. It's interesting.

Hi Eco! I'm really sorry it took me this long to get to this.

The first, hatred and denial ;

Since you capitalized the other two stages and the semi-colon should be a colon, try this:

The first, Hatred and Denial:

When you quickly learn that this is impossible or even rash is when you enter stage two:


Processing:

This is a little awkward because you're separting them when it seems like they should be apart. What about:

Stage two, Processing, is when you quickly learn that everything from stage one is impossible or rash, even.

Why not make something with what you are given, change it,
make better use of it,

This is worded a little funny too, especially with the ellipse at the end. You're asking a question so it should be something like:

Why not make something with what you were given, change it, and make better use of it?

this goes on for some years and then comes...

If you use my correction above, this part of the sentence would have to be independant (standing on it's own), while it's dependant right now (depending on the rest of the sentence to make sense). To make it independant, maybe try something like:


All of that went on for many years.

This is when you learn to live with what you are, you stop and think why are you struggling?

It looks like you're trying to combine things that don't really fit together. What about:

That is when you learned to live with what you were. You stopped and thought, "Why am I struggling?"

That is when you stop trying to be something you are not, and learn to live with your self.

Since the part of the sentence after And can't stand alone, take out the comma. If you switch it around and make the part after And a sentence by itself and not a fragment, you could leave it in, but it's up tp you.

I have gone through the stages listed above more then once and
each time differently.

Wrong form of "then." It should be "than".

I have accepted what I am,

To me, "What" would refer to some sort of creature or something. Since she's a person, what about just replacing "what" with "who"?

but it doesn’t change the fact, that life to me is bleak and empty
with out meaning.

There's no comma between "fact" and "that". You're breaking up a sentence and making them into two dependant clauses.

but be assured that I will return,

Semi-colon instead of a comma since you're combining that sentence with the following one.


The biggest thing I noticed was your comma usage and sentence structure.

Since all of my grammar notes are somewhere, there's two things I remember that can help. Reading the sentences aloud and noticing where you briefly pause for not more than a second or two is one of them. The other one is going over some of the rules here if you're confused or need help.

As for sentence structure, you may want to try this site. It goes over a lot of what I talked about but maybe explains it better.

The last problem I want to talk about is past and present tense. The reason I changed your wording when I gave you suggestions by adding an "ed" or whatever to the end of words is because it's in the past. She's thinking about what she went through, not what she's going through during most of it. To solve this, I'd changed everything from stage one to the end of stage two into past tense.

Click on the links pla303 gave you for formatting.

I did like this, though. I liked how you portrayed the character as being someone strong. It caught my attention and I look forward to reading more. The best part was that you told instead of showed. In most cases, I'd tell you not to, but this worked.

Don't forget to write two reviews because of the two-to-one policy (two reviews per piece of your own submitted). If you need help, you can PM me or another Instructor/Junior Mod/Mod or read this.

I hope I helped and if any of that was repetitive with what pla303 said, I apologize.

Sorry it took me so long to get to this again.

PM me for anything.

-alwaysawriter

I lov it... nice the idea isn't very original but you made it orginal and different by making it in to a journal and writing it that way can't wait to read more...