Critique #146 — Miriam Zibkoff
Kevin Andrew Murphy July 6th, 2007
It was time. He’d been having poor sleep for days, interrupted by imaginary conversations, plot problems and speculated solutions. It was time.
He‘d exhausted all delaying measures; balanced his checkbook, washed the dishes, changed the catbox. He’d pissed away an hour playing paper-ball with the kitten, and another experimenting with his TIVO on the Playboy channel (the slo-mo playback feature provided an interesting frame-by-frame study of some skank’s silicon tits as she fell dreamily back onto pink satin; they slowly, slowly tilted from the horizontal to the vertical while maintaining their inorganic pointed forms, rather like the nose cones of two ICBMs aiming at the horizon - thy breasts, my beloved, could blow up Moscow). He’d needily called friends at work. Shelley (herself a frustrated writer/dental hygienist who’d been scraping too much tartar lately) had given a motivational speech. “How DARE you, a PUBLISHED AUTHOR - how DARE you complain. Get to work and don’t call back till you’ve done at least thirty pages. See you Thursday for the game. Asshole.†Click.
Hi Miriam. Glad you found the group.
A few things I didn’t notice last time I saw this. You repeat “It was time.” and you probably don’t need to.
That semi-colon should be a colon.
This sentence has way too much going on. I like the images, just not the punctuation.
Also, it needs to be its own paragraph.
Also, paragraph break before “Shelley”.
I like this story. I’m biased though, because I know the ending and it’s cool.
Hi
I liked this despite ‘nothing’ happening. What is so great is it resonates with me so much (not the playboy bit! - although I love the line regarding ICBMs (demographic? — maybe say it in full?) “..thy breasts, …” ). I am great at doing nothing when I should be doing something…
Still I would read on.
Adam
Since I don’t know the ending, I can only go by what’s on this first page, and what I see here is yet another story about a writer angsting and cat vacuuming. I do like the snark-voiced comment about the Playboy channel, but it’s not enough to pull me to the second page. Sorry.
Hey.
I did rather like this. I thought the playboy thing was drawn out too long, that could be down to the punctuation. Have a go at putting in more commas and things and see how it goes then.
Yes you did repeat it was time, I think you’d only need the second one and cut the first one.
There should be a new paragraph with the “He needily called his friends” bit. But I would read on. Good job.
Hey Miriam, here’s what I thought.
Very nice - just a few things.
Firstly, I’d be very careful when using the phrase ‘it was time’ - it’s a bit of a cliché nowadays, so it’s hard to take it seriously (especially when it’s used twice. Oddly enough, I thought the repetition worked here - I’d just change the phrase itself).
Ivy already caught the semi-colon.
I wasn’t overly happy with ‘pissed away an hour’, but that’s a personal preference.
I liked the playboy bit (haha, that sounds really bad), specifically ’some skank’s breasts’ and ‘thy breasts, my beloved…’ - very funny. I laughed. Good times.
And I’m most impressed with Shelley - she’s exactly like a good friend of mine, so naturally I’m going to think she rules.
Would definitely read on, I think this may well be something I’d really enjoy. Let me rephrase that: I want the next bit now plz thx. If you wouldn’t mind me reading the whole thing, my e-mail is blue_phoenix86@hotmail.com :).
Ivy gets to know the ending? Clearly unfair :p.
Thanks, all, for the input. Will be correcting the repetitiousness, semicolon, and
Playboy punctuation…all this is very valuable because after working with something
for so long, you fall in love with some of the bits and can’t see the flaws in them
(as I confess I did fall in love, especially with the Playboy bit).
Sure Daniel, I’ll send you the whole story. Critique is needed, because it’s been
rejected by four magazines already, and it would be instructive to get some idea
why (though I suspect a basic lack of originality.)
miriam
The voice is engaging, but this goes on too long about things that aren’t story. There’s no feeling of forward momentum. It would help if you put everything in simple past tense, rather than past perfect, which honestly isn’t necessary here, and in fact contributes to the feeling of lethargy. “He slept poorly for days…” is more immediate (and less wordy) than “He’d been having poor sleep.” Likewise, “He exhausted…” instead of “He’d exhausted…”, and so forth. That way, while it’s still a summary of events (telling, not showing) at least it’s a summary that gives the impression of moving toward something, rather than being static and looking backward.