Young Writers Society

Hey Snazzy! Nice to see you back.

I really like the style of this, mostly because it's sort of poetic for a short story. I'm glad that you're working on writing again, even if your pen is being stubborn. And if you like your idea, then it's always worth pursuing, in my opinion!

Maybe it's because you wrote this at night (I know I always write wacky sentences when I should be sleeping instead of writing!) but there are a few places where the wording doesn't quite flow. I'll just point out a few of them, because in a work this short, it's probably a good idea to do some fine tuning.

I think to how I laid in bed

Laid should be lay, because laid is the past tense of lay (like to lay something down) and lay is the past tense of lie (as in a person lying down, which is what you want here!). Also, maybe you want to say "I think about how..." because to me at least, that just sounds a bit more natural.

sends my dusty bag of bones in to a panic as it jolts me

Here, I think "in to" can just be "into", and it might fit a little better if you said, "into a panic, jolting me" -- eliminating the "as it jolts" makes the sentence move along a little better.

emits energy and a, a, willingness?

I'm not entirely sure why you italicized the second 'a' here? My personal preference is to make it look something like, "a... a willingness?" but however you want to do it is up to you. The two a's with the commas does look a little bit odd, though.

Okay, so I really like the feel of the piece. I'm not sure where you were thinking about going with it, but I liked the thoughts on just being, as well as inanimate objects. There are some things that don't quite fit in, though, or at least not yet. In the beginning, there was:

And looking back, it felt so good.

The narrator, October, doesn't really seem to be in a position to be feeling good. She (I assume it's a she?) panics when someone is at the door, and contemplates simply existing. I think it might be less about feeling good and more about not feeling bad for once. Maybe that's not what's going on, but that's the impression I get, so I think she'd say, "And looking back, it felt a lot better than anything else in my life." Again, not sure what her background is or where you're going with this, but it was just a little thought I had.

I also like the little descriptive bits you have -- like the specific 2 hours and 16 minutes, dusty bag of bones, the italicized counting/breathing, the puzzle metaphor, and the poetic lines at the end. I think that those things are very lovely and poetic, but you could use a few more... narrative things? More like some background, setting the scene and the characters so that it has a little bit more of a prose feel despite the more poetic parts. You don't have to extensively describe the location or anything, but a brief sketch of the characters or scene might be useful. One word or two to reveal a bit of Annie's relationship to October, even if it only mentions that they're sisters or friends or something.

Overall, I really like the message of this! It would be cool if it expanded and went somewhere, but it's nice the way it is as well. I especially love the way you were able to convey October's feelings -- goodness knows I've thought about that before, and that's exactly what it's like! Good luck in your future writing endeavors. Hopefully my suggestions didn't put you off of writing or anything.

Let me know if you have any questions!

-Q