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So Now You Know Why I Don't Wake Up Early

by serendipitous


But the demons don't ever keep quiet.

They whisper in my ear in the sweetest melody, the most bitter truth.They jump around my shoulder and whisper before I've even rubbed my eyes, that today is not worth waking up for.

There's a momentary happiness when you first wake up, totally blank, and it's the most blissful state, where you have no memories from the past and no dreams of the future. But this happy emptiness doesn't last very long, because the demons part their lips to kindle the fire, we call sadness.

The demons speak to remind me of the happy past and the perhaps to happen happy future.

And that's when I want to drift back to sleep, when the demon is screaming that this day will not be as happy as the past was, and will not be as glorious as the future has promised to be.

I want to drift back to sleep and live in that happy emptiness forever, so I pull the pillow closer to my chest and let my eyelids shadow the iris.

But something happens and I remember I have to be that fighter, I promised myself to be, before falling asleep.And though every new day feels like an eternity, I still carry on in this melancholy.

I've learned to shush the demons, but their whispers still slip right through my fingers.

They whisper again that today will not be worth waking up for, it will be another day of treding endlessly on the eggshells. Another day of longing to be somewhere else, in some other space, in some other time. And I'm almost in tears, I won't say I'm sad, but I'm not happy either. And I'm tired, very tired of waking up to not being happy and falling asleep, not happy.

I don't know why, I'm not sad, but not happy either.

But I smile through the pain anyway, knowing that someday I will wake up and these demons won't be there.

-So now you know why I don't wake up early.

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Sun Aug 14, 2016 7:41 pm
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alliyah wrote a review...



Hi there! And welcome to YWS, this was an interesting piece - I'm not sure if it would quite fit in the poetry section or if it leans more towards short story. I think it may be helpful (if you try to develop this piece further) to go either way decisively. I can easily see this being broken up into stanzas with the mysterious descriptive language, or being lengthened with more of a plot background to make it into a short-story.

There are a few areas where I'd like to share my comments and suggestions:

Grammar & Phrasing

The other reviewer sort of hit this already so I'm just going to put my critiques here under the "spoiler" for you to read if you so choose. I would suggest re-reading your work a couple times out-loud before posting just to get some of those easy to catch mistakes out. Although I can still understand the piece with a few typos and grammar mistakes, it generally makes me take a piece more seriously if it's polished and I don't have to pause at little mistakes.

Spoiler! :

You're missing a space between these two sentences
"the most bitter truth.They jump around my shoulder "


This sentence just doesn't make sense to me
"The demons speak to remind me of the happy past and the perhaps to happen happy future."
I think the third "happy" should be a different word.

The phrasing here is a bit odd for me:
"and will not be as glorious as the future has promised to be."


If you're using the plural for "eyelids" you need to use the plural for "iris" as well
"let my eyelids shadow the iris."
I think that would be "irises".

Towards the end you're missing another space between sentences
" before falling asleep.And though every new day"



Style & Word Choice

One area that you could work on towards improving (especially if you're not using a poetry format) is working on being less repetitive. For instance again and again you use the language "the demons have taken away my happiness, I'm tired, I'm sad". This in a nut-shell is your entire piece. While it's fine to say that once or twice - you aren't really adding anything to the message to say it so many times in a row to fill up half a page of text. There are a few sections where the plot sort of moves on and you're using more imagery to describe the demons' actions and I think these areas are stronger and less repetitive.

These couple of sentences were particularly repetitive
"I won't say I'm sad, but I'm not happy either. And I'm tired, very tired of waking up to not being happy and falling asleep, not happy. I don't know why, I'm not sad, but not happy either"
You are just saying the same thing again, and again, and again. And it can get boring for the reader.

I would suggest playing with your word choice and thinking about deeper more creative ways to describe the emotions that you want to describe.

For instance, rather than saying "I am tired, very tired" you change it up and say "my eyelids are heavy with sleep, and I lack enough energy to rise from the slumber that calls me to submit to a restful existence" <- while that may be a bit dramatic for your style, it does show that there are other ways to say very basic things, to make your piece more interesting.

There's some filler and unnecessary phrases that if removed or changed could make your piece more interesting for the reader.

Some words that are repeated a lot in you piece are "happy, sad, demon, But, and, emptiness" for these words especially I think you should look at ways to vary your sentence beginnings and find alternative way to express these somewhat generic words.

There are a few sections where I think you use particularly evocative and creative language choices: the first is this phrasing " the demons part their lips to kindle the fire"

and the second part I really thought was unique was this sentence "I've learned to shush the demons, but their whispers still slip right through my fingers." My only issue here is that it's sort of a mixed metaphor - you "shush" but the demon "slips through your fingers"? Why are they behind your fingers in the first place? If it was changed to include something about your hands initially I think it would be more powerful figurative language. Although I do really like that imagery and would like to see more of this style infused in the rest of your writing.

Content & Overall Impressions

For my first impressions, I think you need to vary your images and word choice a little and think about what message you are really trying to get across.

I think the strongest message or content line was this one: "I remember I have to be that fighter, I promised myself to be, before falling asleep.And though every new day feels like an eternity, I still carry on in this melancholy."

Sometimes when I read heavy or dark pieces like this one, I get weighed down with the negative emotion and don't really feel like I can take anything away from it besides a feeling of sympathy for the author or character in the piece. So I like that you left a bit of hope in the piece, something for the reader to grasp onto.

For me, the beginning and ending lines didn't pack as much of a punch as I was hoping. It's a bold move to begin your piece with the word "But..." ... but for me, it didn't really make sense. I think you could work on both those areas; and maybe remove the dash/hyphen in the very last line.

Overall, it wasn't quite as depressing to read as I thought it might be - which to me at least, is a good thing! And I think you've made a strong first piece to post on YWS. Good luck with all of your further writing and revisions!

~alliyah






Ummm Hi ! Thanks for the great and genuine review, I'm sure it's gonna help me a lot ahead. You see, it's my very first piece that I actually made attempt to write. I was pretty depressed the day I wrote it, and I didn't write it cus I wanted to WRITE, but to just express how I felt, I didn't even think I'll put it on any website whatsoever... but haaha.. So I was very unclear myself, if it was a poem or a short story, i just kinda wrote it. And Yes! I will consider using better word replacements, I wrote the entire things in less than twenty minutes, so I guess that's why the mistakes and lack of clarity. But Thank You.. Thank You... Thank You so much for sparing time to read it and giving this amazing review. :)



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Sun Aug 14, 2016 3:05 pm
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StupidSoup wrote a review...



Hi.

First off, you have a few punctuation errors in the first half of the story. I would attempt to use bbcode quotations to show this to you but I have no idea how to so I'll tell you where said errors may be found.

Your beginning sentence is awkward and can be cut. After that, the first sentence of the second paragraph is a run-on sentence. You could make the flow of the paragraph a lot smoother if you add periods instead of commas.

In the third paragraph, the last couple words, "and the perhaps to happen happy future." is grammatically incorrect. You can cut "perhaps to happen" and instead write something simpler like, "the future that may be..." or simply "the happy future." These options are more viable because they are no longer redundant and fit smoothly with the beginning of the sentence.

In your fourth paragraph, you may want to start with a word other than "And" or simply cut it. It's usually not proper to start a sentence with And (this rule varies in different types of writing.) Besides that, in the same sentence you have an incorrect tense change. Instead of saying "when the demon is screaming..." you can say, "when the demons begin to scream..." This is the proper tense. In this same paragraph, you can change the words of the second sentence, "...and will not be as glorious as the future has promised to be." to something that scans (flows) easily. For example, you could write, "and will not be as glorious as the future." or "...and will not hold the glory the future has promised." These options eliminate extra words and make the sentence smoother.

Your next paragraph is nice. I like the unique word choices near the end of it. However, you need to pluralize the word iris to make this grammatically correct. In addition to this, when you say, "...want to drift back to sleep and live in that happy emptiness forever..." you make the mistake of using the word "that" when it would be more correct to use the word "the." Using "that" in this context makes it seem like your referring to something already mentioned when you haven't mentioned any sort of fantasy before this point.

In your next paragraph you start with, "But something happens..." It would benefit the story if you explained what happens. What does this character undergo that makes he/she feel like she must be a fighter? In addition to this, you use to many commas where you can just eliminate all commas and write the sentence like this, "But something happens and I remember I have to be that fighter I promised myself to be before falling asleep." Lastly, In the final sentence of this paragraph you say, " I still carry on in this melancholy." This leaves the reader asking melancholy what? Melancholy existence? Melancholy state? It's better for the reader if you describe what your character is feeling even if you think it will interrupt your flow or break up the theme your creating.

Moving on, you have a typo in what I assume would otherwise be the word "treading." Otherwise, I really like the imagery you add and there are no other grammatical errors.

Your last couple lines are very melancholy. I like how you separated them for a nice sense of finality.

Overall, I noticed a lot of run on sentences. You can replace a lot of commas with periods to eliminate this problem. For example, in the sentence, "There's a momentary happiness when you first wake up, totally blank, and it's the most blissful state, where you have no memories from the past and no dreams of the future." You can eliminate the commas and rewrite the sentence like this. "There's a momentary happiness when you first wake up, totally blank. It's the most blissful state, where you have no memories of the past. No dreams of the future."This eliminates run on sentences which don't scan as well and don't have the same emphasis as the re-written version.

In conclusion, I really like your imagery and how unique it is. I love the way you make the story bittersweet and how hopeful it seems near the end. Your main problem is the run on sentences and the general grammatical errors. Otherwise I really liked this.

Keep writing!






Thank you for all the encouragement and help !!! I'm sure it's gonna help me a lot ahead. You see, it's my very first piece that I actually made attempt to write. I was pretty depressed the day I wrote it, and I didn't write it cus I wanted to WRITE, but to just express how I felt, I didn't even think I'll put it on any website whatsoever... but haaha.. So I was very unclear myself, if it was a poem or a short story, i just kinda wrote it. And Yes! I will consider using better word replacements, I wrote the entire things in less than twenty minutes, so I guess that's why the mistakes and lack of clarity. But Thank You.. Thank You... Thank You so much for sparing time to read it and giving this amazing review. :)




Be steadfast as a tower that doth not bend its stately summit to the tempest’s shock.
— Dante Alighieri