My Magic

This was really interesting and compelling as a piece of non-fiction that discussed fiction. I felt like this was really strong and well-worded, and I have but a few critiques of this really solid piece you've created. I am using "piece" or "piece of non-fiction", and not "essay", because this is a bit emotional and is an expression of subjectivity. Instead, I would consider this to be on a spectrum from pure memoir and an experimental piece of non-fiction.

The introduction invokes passion, and quite honestly, personal nostalgia. While it can be interpreted as hotheaded and nothing else, I find this part to be good, compelling. While it is intensely personal, and makes you filter everything with scrutiny of fact and emotions, this is just beautiful.

This first paragraph is expressed really well. We learn about your pursuits as a fantasy-reading child, and the imagination that comes within. I relate extremely well. By most standards, I am still a child, let alone a teenager. Yet, this sticks to me as something that I ponder upon. As a young boy of about five, I sometimes thought about being the head of a megacorporation, then shifting into an architect planning large megapolis-scale cities, and sometimes I healed people magically. There is magic in this paragraph. I have never met you. I only know you are an eighteen-year-old with access to the internet who likes to write and read fantasy. Yet, I can connect with your thoughts, the passion and magic you wanted to transmit. That is magic to me. The magic of these little words, the magic of language.

This might sound like mindless praise of this piece, but this is because this is one of my favorite things I've ever read. I have a few criticisms, but please carry on with my "MiNdLeSs PrAiSe" for a few more lines before I get to them. There is this feeling that leaves you mesmerized from something you just saw, read, or heard, and that is what I'm experiencing.

I imagined, as I closed eyes for a few seconds, after reading the part about you being aware of this magic beneath, of you drifting away. You getting older and your imagination and you increasing in the frictions beneath, an animated montage. A young adult reaching for these magical worlds, but they're flying at too fast a rate to reach. The young adult drifts away to mundane life and only memories of this world inhabit him. This is magic.

I love how you discussed the connection of this magic with literature. In my humble opinion, literature is the magic. I feel like it is quite amazing how literature connects the abstractions of human nature. This is the beauty of art. The expression of rationalities and sentiments are what makes art such a respected discipline.

I agree. The English language is weird. It cannot express human nature at great detail. Literature is perhaps the best way in which these human tendencies and contradictions are expressed in this language, and yet, my mother-tongue, Urdu, provides a wider, better range of phrases and words for emotional expression. Mut'a'sirkun, is Urdu's equivalent to duende.

This magic is writing. Duende, or mut'a'sirkun, can truly be found everywhere. I agree, that this sort of passionate inspiration originates in both the ordinary and the epic. This magic, this fire, comes through beautifully from your essay, while it also feels honest where you discuss your connection to the work of Lorca.

Yes, that drinking of tea and the canned aisle goods are something that only the best of writers can make feel passionate, inspired and fueled. And that is really so good. I like how you conclude it, with the high point going to a final denouement.

Now, here are few of my criticisms.

Firstly, lets talk about your structure. We start at a high, and the conflict stays uplifted until the last paragraph, which really messes it up by being a bit less tense. There are two approaches, I believe, to going about such a piece. Either you could try and form a traditional structure, or just put that passion in the final paragraph and just flow with the passion. Except for the final sentence, the final paragraph feels hummed down, and underwhelming to some extent.

And, the other one being the length. Both in the sense this is too less of this too good thing, but also in the sense that it feels unfulfilling to express your thoughts in such a condensed word count. A longer piece would help that.

To conclude, I just want to say this is one of the favourite thigns I've ever read.

Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening/Night(whichever one it is in your part of the world),

Hi! I'm here to leave a quick review!!

First Impression: This was a really interesting piece to read. I don't usually read too many essays on here but I think this was quite a lot of fun to read. It sounded really interesting from the description and it did not dissapoint.

Anyway let's get right to it,

I grew up in the worlds of Narnia, Middle Earth, Hogwarts, and Prydain. I knew the mythologies of these imaginary universes better than those of my own reality. I thought I could fight injustice with a sword, commune with plants and animals, and perform powerful incantations. I waited patiently for an adventure to sweep me up. I never happened upon an interdimensional wardrobe, but because I looked for magic, I found it all around me. Sometimes, as I roamed through the woods, or lay in bed listening to the rain pound down, I was sharply aware of some underlying rhythm. I was aware of a tenuous mystery I could feel but never explain. As I got older, the distance between me and the fantasy worlds of my childhood grew until these vague moments were the only kind of magic I managed to hold onto. I still want to believe in magic. I think that is in part why I write. But unlike my younger self, I am inclined to filter my magical experiences through the encumbering lens of logic and language. My writing concerns itself with attempting to reconcile the unexplainable with the rational. Often I find I do this best by harnessing the power of passionate emotion.

I feel like English does a poor job accommodating the contradictions that are an inherent part of the human experience. This has driven me to pair words together in unconventional, occasionally uncomfortable ways, to appeal to the visceral rather than analytical pieces of my readers’ brains. One of my favorite poets, Federico García Lorca, does this marvelously. Though on an intellectual level I haven't managed to decode the “meaning” of his poems, they are still so vibrant. With the quiet intimacy of his imagery, he manages to invoke duende, a Spanish concept meaning something akin to passionate inspiration. I have searched for this duende in my writing, and I've found it in both the epic and the ordinary. Duende is so beautifully undefinable, unpredictable, that I have come to the conclusion that it must be magic. A magic that cannot be described, only felt.

I want my readers to feel the small moments in my stories just as much as the big ones. I long to capture that particular feeling of drinking tea in the rain or of walking through the canned goods aisle in the supermarket, as much as I want to describe a terrible battle or the night sky. Though I am still searching for Lothlorien, I have found my magic in the messy harmony of reality, and I have spent the last few years of my life trying to translate it onto the page.

This reads like a journal entry, or maybe an excerpt from a memoir. I love it. It's written beautifully and the idea is something I strongly relate to as a lifelong dreamer and writer with an overactive imagination. I'm excited to read more of your work. Thanks for sharing!

Also, welcome to YWS! I hope you come to love it here as much as I do.

Hello there!

Usually when writing essays, a writer should aim to make it as objective as possible instead of subjective to the person who wrote it. I believe there is room in some cases, mainly because of the way we are taught to write an essay in the younger grades, but as a person who is now in grad school, that wouldn't fly by my professors haha.

Speaking of essay writing rules that have room to be expanded on, the same could be applied with phrases such as "I think," "I believe," and anything that states opinion before actual factual statements because of the reasons listed above.

There are also ways to format an essay that are commonly used: introduction, which is the part where you, of course, introduce your idea. Then, body, which shows supporting reasons why you feel the way you do about the topic. Lastly, conclusion, which wraps up your statements and restates the idea once more.

Here the idea is your belief (or want of belief) in magic, but within the first paragraph, I am not introduced to what you are trying to get across with this. I can see the emotions you feel towards this, but I can't see the main point you want to state, which is arguably the most important thing when drafting up an essay.

Second paragraph introduces us to whole idea that is different to the one we begin with, and I personally think the connection between those ideas are thinly intertwined because, like I mentioned above, there isn't an exact point you're trying to make with all of this. I'm unsure if you're trying to inform a reader, or trying to persuade a reader, or something else.

I must bring up "I feel like English does a poor job accommodating the contradictions that are an inherent part of the human experience" as well; I'd like to know what is this trying to say because there isn't any background surrounding why you feel like this, or why you think someone else should maybe feel this way too.

Last paragraph wraps everything up, but it doesn't restate the idea or any kind of point you're trying to get across. (You might be seeing a similar message in every comment I have for paragraphs because that is really the only issue I see.)

I think this has some great potential ~

chi