Torn Paper

Torn Paper


I find myself tearing up the papers again. Papers so much like the pages of my mind, filled with words that can't make sense. I've long since figured out that what makes perfect sense to me, makes no sense at all to others.

All those stories filling up the cup of my mind, threatening to spill over the brim, flooding the world with the mess of nonsense no one can decipher. I stare at the wall, letting my thoughts take me, lift me with their silken wings, carry me past the stars and just above the land of imagination. I never touch the ground when I go there, I only graze the floor, stuck somewhere between Writer's Block and complete inspiration.

I blink, shaking my head, flicking my eyes around the room to clear them. I must have zoned out again, fell back into my mind and away from the world. I don't understand why I'm told not to do that, not to think as profoundly as possible, not to contemplate philosophy and seek sudden inspiration. Why shouldn't I? Why shouldn't others? Why should all who think as sentient beings here on this planet have minds that contain the exact same focus and self-discipline as their colleagues?

They say day-dreamers tend to be less happy than non-dreamers. That makes sense, since we do tend to think a lot harder about things only minorities care about. We think about things in the past that aren't recorded, things in the future that might never happen. We think about death, we don't wish to understand life because we already know that life is something not meant to ever be understood. But I digress, my point here is simple; we are less happy, it's true but we are content in our unhappiness.

As I'm sure you know, I don't care if people think I'm mad. I am. I'm insane, I think very differently. If prescribed pills, I'd throw them out, if told to focus, I'll lose myself in the folds of my mind, if told by every trusted government official we have here in Canada that the government has no secrets and knows nothing more than what we know, I'd blow my eyes out laughing.

To me, sanity is insane. Why? Because it's boring.

Aye, but I'm ranting again and from what I've encountered, people don't like that even if I do. People don't like it when I droll on and on even if I can make it different, interesting, strange or even beautiful, they just don't like my rants.

And yet, all I'm doing is painting, finger-painting with my keyboard, sketching with a mouse. Writing and writing and writing some more, two stories published, a thousand and one thrown away simply because, they were too weird.

I blink, shaking my head. I was writing, wasn't I? Oy, and now I'm ranting again. Going on and on about things no one in their right mind cares about.

Well, that's not true. The right sides of their minds might be enjoying this while the left sides laugh in bitter distaste. Sometimes I'm so glad my right side is slowly consuming my left. Soon I will have nothing but thoughts of pointless yet meaningful queries floating in my mind rather than relentless numbers and ravaging logic.

I turn from my computer, back to my papers, back to my pencil, back to classic writing.

How I'm going to miss it. Paper, I mean. But dead trees or e-waste is a difficult choice.

I start to write again, letting the vines of sentences string together through my fingers, onto the pencil and latch onto the paper. I'm not making sense, I'm ranting on and on, I'm writing up concepts no one will ever understand and everyone will criticize.

But I'm never going to change and I can't help but smile at the stories I have written, meant for my eyes alone. I sigh and tuck my pencil behind my ear, rotating the cramp out of my wrist.

I find myself tearing up the papers again.

Hi GoaGreena, I really can relate to this. What you described is exactly something I would do; my mind is always wandering.

One thing that wasn't good here was your rambling. I ramble all the time in my writing, but I always edit it out because it distracts the focus of the reader. If you ramble they are not sure what your message is and is going to be. After finishing it I think your story is about a person who gets distracted and is wondering why people are so against that.

I find myself tearing up the papers again. Papers so much like the pages of my mind, filled with words that can't make sense. I've long since figured out that what makes perfect sense to me, makes no sense at all to others.

All those stories filling up the cup of my mind, threatening to spill over the brim, flooding the world with the mess of nonsense no one can decipher. I stare at the wall, letting my thoughts take me, lift me with their silken wings, carry me past the stars and just above the land of imagination. I never touch the ground when I go there, I only graze the floor, stuck somewhere between Writer's Block and complete inspiration.

I blink, shaking my head, flicking my eyes around the room to clear them. I must have zoned out again, fell back into my mind and away from the world. I don't understand why I'm told not to do that, not to think as profoundly as possible, not to contemplate philosophy and seek sudden inspiration. Why shouldn't I? Why shouldn't others? Why should all who think as sentient beings here on this planet have minds that contain the exact same focus and self-discipline as their colleagues?

They say day-dreamers tend to be less happy than non-dreamers. That makes sense, since we do tend to think a lot harder about things only minorities care about. We think about things in the past that aren't recorded, things in the future that might never happen. We think about death, we don't wish to understand life because we already know that life is something not meant to ever be understood. But I digress, my point here is simple; we are less happy, it's true but we are content in our unhappiness.

As I'm sure you know, I don't care if people think I'm mad. I am. I'm insane, I think very differently. If prescribed pills, I'd throw them out, if told to focus, I'll lose myself in the folds of my mind, if told by every trusted government official we have here in Canada that the government has no secrets and knows nothing more than what we know, I'd blow my eyes out laughing.

To me, sanity is insane. Why? Because it's boring.

Aye, but I'm ranting again and from what I've encountered, people don't like that even if I do. People don't like it when I droll on and on even if I can make it different, interesting, strange or even beautiful, they just don't like my rants.

And yet, all I'm doing is painting, finger-painting with my keyboard, sketching with a mouse. Writing and writing and writing some more, two stories published, a thousand and one thrown away simply because, they were too weird.

I blink, shaking my head. I was writing, wasn't I? Oy, and now I'm ranting again. Going on and on about things no one in their right mind cares about.

Well, that's not true. The right sides of their minds might be enjoying this while the left sides laugh in bitter distaste. Sometimes I'm so glad my right side is slowly consuming my left. Soon I will have nothing but thoughts of pointless yet meaningful queries floating in my mind rather than relentless numbers and ravaging logic.

I turn from my computer, back to my papers, back to my pencil, back to classic writing.

How I'm going to miss it. Paper, I mean. But dead trees or e-waist is a difficult choice.

I start to write again, letting the vines of sentences string together through my fingers, onto the pencil and latch onto the paper. I'm not making sense, I'm ranting on and on, I'm writing up concepts no one will ever understand and everyone will criticize.

But I'm never going to change and I can't help but smile at the stories I have written, meant for my eyes alone. I sigh and tuck my pencil behind my ear, rotating the cramp out of my wrist.

I find myself tearing up the papers again.

What is in red above are just some examples of what I think of as 'going somewhat off subject.' I suppose you will disagree. But look at the last sentence I made red. You start to talk about the huge problem of logging. That made me start to think that you were going to expand and tie it in somehow. But you didn't. I can tell that a bit of ranting goes with your writing style, but there is a time when you can stop. If you took out the things I have made red there would be little or no change in the meaning of the story.


Another thing that I noticed is that you said the word 'write' and the word 'rant' a lot. This got a bit tedious. Expand your vocabulary. Be more specific. For example the word 'write' right now now I can think of 'draft', 'scribble', 'scratch', 'type'. All these words mean almost the same thing. No, don't go searching in the dictionary until you find a word like 'ennui' when you could just say 'bored'. But you can search your brain for a word that is a little bit different then the ones you have already used in your story.

Besides those to points I only found a few nitpicks. Overall I really liked your story especially because I can relate to it.

I hope I helped,

A. S.

It may have been one big rant, but at least it was interesting. I couldn't find any problems regarding grammar, but I think a few peices could be rephrased to make it flow better.

I find myself tearing up the papers again. Papers so much like the pages of my mind, filled with words that don't make sense. I've long since figured out that what makes perfect sense to me, makes no sense at all to others.

All those stories filling up the cup of my mind, threatening to spill over the brim, flooding the world with a mess of nonsense that no one can decipher.

How I'm going to miss it. Paper, I mean. But dead trees or e-waste is a difficult choice.

I'm guessing this is what you meant, I don't really understand this part.
I think it is a well written peice that does genuinly make me think you are insane
Keep writing!

Nats

This made me laugh because it's exactly what i do on a daily basis when i'm trying to concentrate on something...now im wondering if i'm insane haha. But I thought it was actually really well written and I think that the parts that other reviewers told you to omit actually conribute to show how far your mind wanders when your'e working so I don't know if I would agree that you should take them out. Anyway well done I thought it was really good.

Hi, GG!

I quite like this, you've got those feelings that all of us have at some point at another -- frustration with our writing, writers block, struggling to stay focused, wondering if we're crazy ;)

The main issue that I have with this, as it stands at the moment, is that physically not an awful lot happens. Most of what we have here is introspection in one way or another, and it can be hard to hold your readers attention with this because, in our minds, there's nothing to visualise along with the words.

You start off with our narrator tearing up paper, which is nice -- we start off with an action, so there's that initial image in our minds. It seems like most of your imagery is at the beginning, the brimming cup, silken wings and starts, the land of imagination. I think it would be nice to give a bit of extra depth to all of these things, what sort of things -- stories-- are threatening to spill over that cup? What does the land of imagination look like? Just a little extra so that we can see it a little easier.

After this we have the rant, something that the narrator actually admits, there's a lot of, I'm not quite sure what to call it, philosophising? We lose that mental image and have a string of thoughts and feelings and questions but as it is it's a little like they're floating in the ether, without anything physical to tie them down. As a result, it's a little hard to stay focused on what's being said, and I find myself skipping over the text to reach a point at which things happen.

After the rant we have some nice imagery again, the vines of sentences making their way to the paper, like a plant. I love the idea of finger-painting with my keyboard, sketching with my mouse, because not only does it sound nice, but it kinda encapsulated what I'm trying to say ;) we need those pictures painted with words in order to visualise what's happening in our minds.

I sigh and tuck my pencil behind my ear, rotating the cramp out of my wrist.

I find myself tearing up the papers again.

I thought that this was quite a nice way to end things, not only is it something that we can see happening, but it's something that I'm sure most of us here can relate to all too well ;)

I hope that I've been of some use to you! If you'd like me to elaborate on anything, or have any questions you'd like to ask, feel free to shoot me a PM and whatnot! :D

- Tinny

Thanks for the reviews, everyone. I did feel like this wasn't so much a story as it was a collection of thoughts as I was writing it, because basically what I was doing was writing down everything I was thinking at that moment. I didn't really have much of a plan as I was just describing my thoughts and what it's like to zone out for me.

I know I need more images, I was sure of it when I re-read this and I'm even more sure now that people have confirmed this query. I do want to keep the ran, though, because for some reason I like having it there and I think it highlights my argument that ranting can be important even if most people hate it, that was the whole point of this was to show that sometimes a rant can mean something for the story without really seeming to be a part of the "plot". This had no plot, that's why the rant was so important, without it, my story has a whole other meaning that was not my intention.

The part without the rant refers to how people don't like it when you add more than needed, then I argue that sometimes those parts are in fact meaningful and needed and yet people still don't like that part when that was what the story was about, that and the land of imagination we all as writers drift off into.

I think adding more imagery could help those with shorter attention spans get into this more, though. I have a rather low attention span myself but my problem is I'm backwards, I love, love, LOVE it when writers give voice to there thoughts, images or not I always find something to picture.

But I'm weird, I will add more imagery. Thanks for the reviews!