A/N I'm not sure how much of that makes sense, seeing as I wrote it in 20 minutes and haven't edited it at all. I'm really more interested in your interpretations of this and what it means to you. It's kind of an experiment . :)
Let us out, they whisper.
“Shh,” I say, “soon.”
I can feel them writhing, twisting, and straining to burst out. For a few moments more I hold them at bay, closing my eyes and savouring the moment, thinking about the blank, white world that awaited me. With a shuddering breath and thumping heart, I pick up my pen and let it kiss the paper.
It draws out like a contented sigh, the leaping words dripping from my fingers into my pen and onto the paper. They scatter across the page, blooming into an incoherent mess, calling out to me to show them the way.
But I can't.
I don't know the way. I'm not even sure if I ever did.
Come with us, they beckon. Look deeper.
Look deeper.
Deeper, and deeper, until I'm as lost and confused as they are. Here things are not as they seem, and not as we expect. The concepts are heavy drapes in a dark abandoned house, and the notions are like light curtains in a summer cottage. Fragments insist on being scraps of cloth ready to flit away and be lost forever. I try to make my way through theses abstractions, pushing past the drapes, peering through the curtains and frantically clutching at and collecting the scraps of cloth so that I'd have enough to sew together an idea.
Everything is a dreamy haze in which moments rush before me. I have no sense of time. No sense of here and now. Running, running, turning left, turning right, going straight. Breathless and exhilarated, I try to see where I am. I pause. I think. Suddenly, everything has lost it's shine. I attempt to read the words like a map, try to piece them together like a puzzle, but again and again they slither out of my grasp.
Show us! they cry. Tell us where to go!
“I can't,” I whisper.
I can't.
My room creeps into my peripheral vision. It threatens to pull me back. Back to the world of hard floors and concrete walls.
No, no! I have to finish this first.
I let myself sway, and then fall into the current of my thoughts. The stream carries me back to that moment, that moment when pen had touched paper and I had let it all go. It hits me then, the realisation, the understanding. How it all comes together and where everything should go. A feeling of absolute comprehension. I watch in awe as the white space around me fills with a montage of colours and shapes. Contours of light and dark tones are drawn and I can see light hitting surfaces creating darkness and shadows. I can hear their laughter bubbling through the air as they play in the world I created. This story is complete but the moment will never end. In this moment, I am endless. In this moment I have eternity.
The pen stops moving, and I look at the neat rows of words across the page. In those words lies a captured moment. A smile of satisfaction sneaks it's way onto my face, and I put my pen down. My fingers are covered in ink, tattoos to commemorate my journey. For I have reached, the end.
Points:
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IP address:
Canary word: Present
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140,229 Literary Works • 673,048 Reviews
I loved it. The word choice was simply amazing. "I pick up my pen and let it kiss the paper..." etc. etc. etc. (Yes, we run into the problem of seeming cliché once in a while, but!) The idea of having the character write was brilliant. In that way, they could reach an end, but remain endless.
I was going to comment about small errors, but it looks like they've been taken care of... huh. Hmm... what's left? Oh! (Sorry, I'm just glad I can actually "talk" about something) Redundancy. In the second to last paragraph, the word "moment" appears once within each of its last three sentences. This may or may not be intentional, but it's really not necessary. I feel as if this occurs somewhere else as well, but I can't find it. Also, (as mentioned) the word choice was beautiful, but you don't want to overuse the intended imagery. Other than that and what has already mentioned below, it's simply lovely. Please keep writing ^_^
(I really hope that made sense. I am incredibly tired and my thoughts are running together.)
Hey, Silver!
I adore this. Writing's a cliché theme, but you took that theme and molded it to suit your personal views. I'll confess, the beginning worried me. I thought I'd see the narrator launch into a labyrinth of clichés. "I write to escape" and all that jazz. But ... no. The second-to-last paragraph. It stresses how writing takes control of you, not how you take control of it. When you write, I always thought, you flip into autopilot. You're exploring the most dangerous regions of your consciousness. And it frightens you. It frightens you to death. How much control you have over what's controlling you.
Paradox. O_o
The imagery! It stole my breath away. Especially the pen kissing the paper bit and the running, the turning left. I might be overlooking this, but "left" refers to the west, right? and the west symbolizes death because the sun sets in the west ... and, ah. The bit after that concerns turning right. Death, then renewal.
One more thing: "The story is complete but the moment will never end."
I could see this becoming a quote. It's like saying "there's no true ending" or "the game's still on, but there may be some different players now." Lovin' it!
The previous reviewers are saying it's too short and needs to be elaborated on. I beg to differ. Perfect length.
Nitpicks
Phrased this way, it's implied that the words are "writhing" and "twisting" to burst, in addition to "straining," which makes for a little confusion. I think the narrator meant: "writhing, twisting, and straining [period]." It also just sounds a whole lot cleaner without the extra preposition and verb and adverb.
I wouldn't call this description "weak." More like ... dilute. Watery. The verb "thinking," too. I don't use it often, but I love it because it's bursting with potential imagery. As Professor Snape says, a mind isn't a book to be opened and read at will. It's more like a cliff. Fissures, cavities, seamless sheets of stone.
In this case, I'm thinking ... dust. It's all up to you, though. ^_^
Grammar: A "few moments more" should precede a comma, as it's an introductory phrase that's over three words.
Eh. Same case here. Watery. Cliché a bit, as well. You might want to go on to mention how it's pumping blood at an electric speed, that kind of thing. As for breathing ... I'll leave it to you.
Grammar: An article should precede "thumping," in accordance with "shuddering": "With a shuddering breath and a thumping heart"
Contradiction here. "Leaping" and "dripping." The former's energetic, while the latter's kinda syrupy and molasses-y. It's also an overflow. Too much description crammed into one space. Easy fix: just cut out one of the two, or play around with the phrasing a bit.
Whoa. That was a startling shift in atmosphere. It's like the story's pulling from the dark, enigmatic stuff, and the narrator doesn't like it and tries pulling us back into the dark, enigmatic stuff, but is actually just pulling us farther back out of it, if that makes any sense.
This a pretty messy sentence. "Light tones" don't have contours, and I like that you're trying to give it a defining shape, but the narrator mentions it casually, as opposed to elaborating on it and morphing it into another description.
There're also two missing commas. Grammatically speaking, it should be: "Contours of light and dark tones are drawn, and I can see light hitting surfaces, creating darkness and shadows."
"Hitting" is another watery verb. There's just no juice in it that makes it a description. Same with "drawn." If you're speaking artistically, I'd suggest "sketched." I'd do this, but it's all up to you, really, whether you want to change it or not: "Light and dark tones are sketched into distinct contours, and inside, light and darkness itself mesh into shadow." The prepositions reflect each other, establishing repetition.
Forgot a comma after the second "moment."
Keep it up! Looking forward to hearing more prose poetry from you!
EDIT: Was this unpublished?
Hey Silver!
This one in particular is fantastic.You wrote a short story, that is awesome! I'll be doing a quick review here.
Well, I really liked this. A short, experimentation on the notion of writing itself. That is pretty neat. (Are you trying to Inceptionize my brain?)
What I was impressed with in this piece was the amount and quality of your beautiful, vivid imagery. The art of writing itself is given a lot of love and devotion. Though it's overall bewildering as you read through this, it instantly makes sense and has a clear passion it's conveying. Any writer will know.
The beautiful way you wrote this is definately the strongest part of this piece. You really glamorize and portray the world of writing in a great way. Despite its shortness, there are so many examples I could pull out.
I also loved the back and forth dialogue or exchange between the writer and the words themselves. Their eagerness is a great addition.
The poetic style you wrote this in though, leads to somewhat confusing or unclear instances.
For example:
This was a bit hard to completely grasp. I do understand that the imagination and fantasy of writing can create life and light where there is only darkness. So a dark, abandoned house can become lit up and full of life, in a way. However, I don't get what these 'scraps of cloth' are supposed to be. It's a nice metaphor and I like it, but hard to grasp.
Lastly, a few things I picked up on:
Edit
Edit
Remember:
It's - It is
Its - Possessive
Edit
One more of these. They are easy and quick errors to make, I used to make them myself. But once you remember them clearly, they are easy to master.
Alright, that's pretty much all I could comment on. This was really good, you should write more shorts.
Keep it up, Silver!
Cheers
Birkhoff
You wrote something, yay!
Okay, so I love how amazingly simple but deep this is. Your imagery is gorgeous--ink-stained imagery is always gorgeous, innit?--and I also like how you've compared writing to a journey: destination unknown. I wouldn't say it's short, exactly, but one criticism I do have is that even though you've taken us through all these wonderful, crawling metaphors and given us an insight into how absolutely entranced you can become by something you love, yet be hesitant with--it isn't as strong as it could be. I know this is one of those things that just come flowing naturally, begging to be put to paper, but if you ever sit down to edit and re-write this, do consider "bulking" it up. By bulking it up, I don't mean making it longer since honestly, word count matters less as compared to the actual story and the way you choose to develop this.
What I'm trying to say, though, is that even though I loved reading this, and you totally grabbed me by the collar and dragged me through the wonderful metaphorical world, it felt more like I was scrolling through a shadow than the actual object. Am I making sense? Like, although you've described what writing is like, and the glorious journey of the pen combined with how writers live in a world of their own which is so much more inviting than our own, I do think you could have developed the character a bit more, given us a backstory and gotten us thoroughly attached. I mean, this is someone we all can relate to, both as writers and as people. We seek exodus; paper provides.
So I think it makes sense if I say that the ending had more of a sense of direction than the beginning did. The introduction lacks that "pull," I feel. I liked that you began with a thought, but it could use some development. Give us some atmosphere. I want to see you struggle with yourself, tap your fingers on the desk, shift your attention to what you're supposed to be doing whilst resisting the urge to write. I want to hear the clock ticking on the wall, the bleakness around you that drives you insane. I want to see that hesitation. That's pretty much it.
Couple of quick nit-picks:
~ "awaited" should be "awaits."
What do you mean by "It"? The pen or the paper? I'm assuming it's the paper, but please do specify!
Consider cutting out that comma before "and." The reader automatically pauses upon seeing it and it kind of messes with the flow.
^Also, that comma strikes me as rather unnecessary, too.
Okay, so I loved reading this. I loved your vivid imagery and the way you start off with a certain metaphor or comparison, only to twist it and dive into its sultry depths. I could see so much symbolism in this: the pen signifies freedom, at least, it does to me. The paper signifies life, and these paths we walk upon. We are like pens, and half the time we don't really know what decisions to make or how to sew our "words" together until we fall into a steady rhythm and just go with it. Life is complex. Words are, too. Thank you for sharing this. <3 It was beautiful.
Keep it up! Keep writing!
I hope this helped.
~Pompadour
Heyyy! Bro!
At first I was confused while reading this, so I almost left it before the end... but that is also becouse you sometimes have phrases and words that I can't understand, since I'm not all that good with english. But, I'm really glad that I read it all!
So... a story 'bout writing, huh? Actually, I didn't really expect that, so it is nice how it all made sense. I wonder if this is how you really feel when writing? I know the feeling of being hunted by an untold story all too well, well I guess many people do. So this is really something most of us can relate to!
Last, I really like all those spitted-out at once stories. Well, I'm not sure why, but that feeling of just writing without thinking or caring is just amazing, and I always feel good. And, you've done very well job, you were not repetitive, you made sense, and you made an awesome story!
-Alchemist
Alchy! I'm glad you managed to finish it, my writing can be quite a mess sometimes ^.^ Yes, this basically documents my writing process, it's actually how I felt while writing this story
Thank you for your review! 
well you got to the point in the end, I have to learn to be patient XD
It's probably 'cause I was practising imagery. That tends to get rambly XD
First of all, you will be pleased to know that this work does make sense.
I also like this, because you're practically opening with dialogue and that's a good way to launch into the action.I like the way open with the voices of the characters in the piece - because they're mysterious and it builds intrigue for the reader to work out who they are.
My main criticism about this work - well there are two actually:
1. It's too short, you need to develop this.
2. It's written in the present tense; and personally, I find it's always an awkward way to read things. Most stories are written in the past tense; and that's just the convention. You've broken it here and that's not necessarily bad, it's just awkward to read.
This is a good work. And it looks like you're adding to a good repertoire of works.
Keep writing.
~BSF
Thank you for your review BiSF! I'm glad it made sense XD