I'm Crazy

[RawToast225 he/him]

All right. I think I have had given you guys enough time to read it. What do you think? Dig in. Tell my typos, problems, holes, and other things you think I need to know. Let the advice rain down from the top to the bottom.

[Mandamon he/him]

Not a whole lot to report on this one.  It was interesting to read, but a little hard to get through.

 

I was happy to see there is a point and arc to this as a story (which I was beginning to suspect while reading it), but there's a lot of crazy to slog through to get there.  You tell us this upfront, so the reader sort of knows what to expect.  It's still hard for me to read, simply because it's written as by one who is not good at writing.

The final "zing" of the story is pretty disturbing, but think it fulfills the promises at the beginning.

 

Just out of curiosity, was this written as a particular writing exercise, or just something that came to you?  Who is your intended audience for this?

[RawToast225 he/him]

It is literally something I dashed off in an hour as the idea came to me. I had no intended audience and, if I ever touch it again, I am going to add more entries. More of a "Hey, I'm getting better" type thing. As it stands it's a little bit of an abrupt resolution.

So, yes. It does come from one messed up mind.

Edit: I just realized it has a House on Mango Street feel to it. The innocence encountering the disturbing.

Edited January 8, 2015 by Arthur Dent

[LerroyJenkins he/him]

This was pretty interesting. 

 

I don't know what everyone else took from this, so I'll explain my take on it real quick.

Crazy people usually aren't aware that they are crazy, so from the beginning I'm actually assuming the kid isn't crazy because he said he was crazy ... if that makes any kind of sense. The next few entries are great set up hidden in the kids jumbled thoughts, crazy or not. And finally in the end, when he's gone through elctrotherapy, he tells the "truth" about what happened. But the fact that he only said what happened after the elctrotherapy and seven days of treatment, makes me doubt the story. That and the fact that the doctors forced him to stop typing just before he was about to tell his story of what happened that day(before his treatments), makes me think there's more here than there seems. Plus, now that I think of it, the mom seems to be on meds, making it seem even more likely that she killed her husband.

 

 

Now whether or not my take on it is accurate doesn't matter. Not if the point of the paper is to make the reader think. I really enjoyed this! But I think that there are some areas that can still be improved;

• The opening- I would open with the line "My doctor said I should write my experiences down and he usually knows what he is talking about.". This shows the reader right away that this isn't a clever twist from the author, but a legitimate mental patient.
• There are still typos, but I'm not going to go through all of them  here. But I would like it if you didn't change them but say 'oops' like you did for some of the others. I like that its a type writer. I think that bringing up the typos more often would play on the fact that you can't fix typos easily on a typewriter and it would keep me into the surreal setting a little better. 

 

I really liked this, with a little tweaking its a great short story

[RawToast225 he/him]

Okay, good stuff to work on here! Thank you for reading it! One thing I got back from f family member who read this was that it was odd he got better after one week of the electro therapy. To be honest, I was running out of writing juice at the end of the book and didn't want to write the damnation thing any more. As a consequence, it wasn't as good of an ending it could have been. I really just need to fix the flow.

I wanted it to be a legit mental patient. It isn't does to be clever, it's supposed to be barely veiled, blatant crazy.

I completely forgot about the typo thing! I will use that for the typos. Good suggestions, Jenkins

[Lord Juugatsu]

I've always personally kind of enjoyed this type of pseudo-journal, story telling where you get straight character voice and indications of what happens between each entry. I actually liked Jenkins's take on the whole 'not actually crazy, but put away because the narrator was a witness' angle. While I haven't really researched it, I have seen many references to electrocution as torture and electro therapy effectively being torture, at least, back in the day.

In terms of weak areas: The ending was kind of mentioned already, but rather than abrupt,  I just felt hand fed during it. With the rest of the story, there's some decent foreshadowing and the narrator is self-proclaimed crazy, which kind of established a certain distrust towards the narrator innately. Between that and the semi-quirky personality, the ending felt like it was just 'Yeah, I'm kind of sane now, and here's what was kind of hidden between the lines before'. Enough clues and foreshadowing to get all of the information across and then a less blatant confession would probably have me feeling more accomplished. Or maybe even something to the effect where the narrator confesses, but as an aside or something, so it's not as focused in on, would come across with more impact. I'm getting far too prescriptive though. Basically, the ending left me feeling kind of let down because of how forthcoming the narrator suddenly was.

[RawToast225 he/him]

Ooh, that's a good suggestion! I like the idea of not focussing on it so much.

[Robinski he/him]

Diving straight in - “I had an experience...”

 

“If you want to tell bigger lies, you have to get a bigger rug...” (you would keep a secret)

 

I started out unengaged, but there are some nice ideas and turns of phrase, and by the end of Part One I was interested to see how the piece would develop.

 

Nice line about the typo, certainly makes a critiquer think while reading!

 

“...they tell your wrong.” ???

 

“I know what you’re thinking”

 

I presume there the narrator is cut off at the end of Part Three, so better to use ellipsis, i.e. “except for this one time when...”

 

I'm enjoying the style of the piece. I think the ‘voice’ of the narration could well be that of the 13 year old as you note, although there is the occasion word which seems older, like “apparently” at the start of Part Two.

 

I enjoyed the ice cream logic, it’s an interesting take on normal, because in reality there must be some children who don’t like ice cream, of course, but not very many. Does that make them abnormal by a statistical definition?

 

You mention the 13 year-old, but then you refer to “crazy man’s journal”. It could be a facet of the story, that the narrator is a man, but with the impression that he is still a child, or it could just be a lapse of precision in the writing – I don’t know yet.

 

“I hesitate to write this...”

 

Don’t think it’s oratory silence, is it, since that would be speaking, wouldn’t it? Is it narrative silence?

 

So, in Part Five we get the big reveal. I can’t say it was surprising, not because I saw it coming, but because I wasn’t looking for it. I think I had accepted the implication that his mother might have killed his father, or that his father had just left and he had gone crazy as a result.

 

I had some issues with the conclusion and the description of the event. I find it hard to accept the level of anger that must surely have driven a child to stab his father 17 times, because the narrator’s demeanour throughout the account doesn’t foreshadow it. Okay, he’s in treatment and therefore doesn’t display the same behaviour as before, but I didn’t get any clues that there was such a level of suppressed (medicated?) anger within him.

 

I won’t quibble about the practicalities of stabbing someone 17 times with a pencil. I doubt that the pencil would stay unbroken for anything like that number of blows, but I'm willing to suspend my disbelief on that.

 

All-in-all, I think it’s an interesting character piece with some good ideas. It reads pretty well and anywhere the language is untidy you can always blame it on the 13/14 year old, I guess! I can’t say it blew my socks off, or was especially surprising or twisty, for the reason I gave above. Another factor in that was probably that I didn’t particularly care about the character. There didn’t seem to be anything at stake, as such. Nothing hanging over him (shock treatment, for example), no jeopardy I guess is what I'm saying, and that resulted in a lack of tension in the story. Not all stories have to have tension, I realise, but it is an element that makes a reader invest in the protagonist, I think.

 

In parting however, good job, for trying something different and interesting. Okay, maybe it didn’t particularly work for me, but I'm sure it will work for others and that you tested yourself and discovered stuff about your writing in any case.

 

Reading the comments now, I’ve something to add. Lerroy makes a good point about the crazy, and truly ‘crazy’ (unwell) people not knowing it. I totally agree with that. I don’t know if it’s a proven medical principle or just an apocryphal idea, but it has a ring of good logic to it.

 

Another thing, I wouldn’t add too much more to it – maybe one entry (or two short ones) about getting better (or improving). That was more smoothly lead into the reveal at the end, which did seem rather sudden. But I wouldn’t go into too much detail with these additions. I thought the length of the piece was right, I wouldn’t have wanted to devote too much longer to reading it, and there would be a higher risk of repetition in making it longer.

 

On the typos thing, that's all very well for the deliberate ones, however I think there may be some that are unintended, and I think that a piece like this always relies on the precision of the language, so if you were going to submit anywhere, a good tidy up would be worthwhile.

[RawToast225 he/him]

With these three reviews, I can make it perfect. Is it against the conventions to resubmit a finished product after submitting it once already? If so, I won't. If there isn't any embargo on it, I want to submit it in a few drafts. Sound good?

[LerroyJenkins he/him]

I'd like to see what you do with it, yeah!

[Robinski he/him]

You might want to check the Rules post, but I recall it being done once in the past. I think if everyone was resubmitting from one week to the next it would be banned, but I, personally, wouldn't mind reading a revision. Even if Silk SLAMS this suggestion with her/his mighty Hammer of Moderation, I'd be willing to read it again if you mail me direct.

 

Also, be VERY wary about using the word 'perfect' around here...    ; o )

Edited January 10, 2015 by Robinski

[LerroyJenkins he/him]

SILK IS A GIRL!?!?! Nothing makes sense anymore

[Robinski he/him]

What? Well his/her profile is gender non-specific.

[RawToast225 he/him]

I know what Silk is: awesome.

Anyway, I'll resubmit it in a couple weeks. Until then, I'm out of submitting stuff.

Edit: I'm so flipping excited to submit this again!

Edited January 10, 2015 by Arthur Dent