Young Writers Society

Hey there! Welcome, welcome, welcome and Happy Review Day! Let's hop right in, ya?!

On the macro, welcome to ever writing anything xD This entire thing is me when I play Boggle as well haha. But this is definitely something that we feel a lot of the times. If you spent all your days studying language, especially English. You'd probably end up even more confused than you started out with. This piece reminded me of that short essay that says we should be locked up for using the English language because we drive on parkway, park on driveways, have noses that run and feet that smell etc.
I would also say that as an overall aesthetic experience, I would consider changing this onto some sort of stanza or poetic format. The way you wrote this has a sort of whimsical, up and down feeling to it thar I think lends itself to being lined out. It also would make it slightly easier to read, and on YWS specifically, look better than just one chunk paragraph. Now, that's totally up to you if you want to do it, but I don't think it would hurt to play around with it! As for other nitpicking, Arian already got most of the grammar, so I won't rehash that.

In the last line you say that the human language never felt more distant. I would love to have seen a second paragraph contrasting this with another type of language that feels closer. Thus could be physical touch, gifts giving, nature itself, sights sounds and smells etc.

But overall I like this piece. I think being able to, ironically, used the English language to concisely explain this problem is actually somewhat difficult to do, and you did it well. Hope this helps!

~Messy

Hello there! Wishing you well wherever you are in the world. For starters, these questions I feel many, many writers have thought. When creating, whether it be in poetry or story, no matter the length or subject, we have all hit a moment where words escape us. Shoot, even in my own thoughts alone, I have pondered a few of these questions! It's like when you know what you want to say but cannot describe it; find the word that encapsulates it or fits "perfectly."

That said, English in and of itself has some major contradictory rules that make no sense. It's like a map with no clear directions from one place to another, yet we still know how they work together to get to where we need to go. Which means these thoughts have validity. How can we have words when rules like "I before E, except after C" have SO many exceptions? Looking at you: seize, vein, weird, heist, their, feisty, foreign. Isn't it weird that more words DON'T follow this than DO? How any of us learn to read is beyond me!

Now for my review and no more of my random rantings. Before I critique, please know that this is meant to be helpful. Take what you will and leave out all the rest. Don't shoot the messenger as they say as I'm only aiming to assist in honing your craft. I did notice a typo, I believe in: I had an idea, a huch, but what exactly they meant seemed blurry to me. I could be wrong, so let me know! You also do not need a comma after "understand" in the line: How could I make myself understand, when there was nothing remotely similar to them?. On the contrary, you do need a comma before "or" and have an unnecessary extra space after "and" in the line: Did other people have the same struggles or was I just too uneducated and, frankly speaking, stupid?.

Besides these few grammatical issues, there are no spelling issues, and overall this is well-written. It made me feel very "seen" and comforted me that no matter our age, we still struggle to reach literary concepts, figuratively and literally. Please note that if this is a script from your personal thoughts, you are not at all "stupid." We are all one-word fumble away from writer's block or disillusionment towards failing to see the words we try to envision clearly. I find the irony in how this describes an inability to picture a word and being a stranger to human language. Yet, you have combined a host of words into sentences into a paragraph that is beautiful, relatable, and very clear to understand. Kudos to you for creating that contradiction! With love, ♡a