# (~3k) (language)



## Jon M (Mar 26, 2013)

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## Deleted member 49710 (Mar 26, 2013)

Hey Jon,
How to critique seems like an issue that comes up so often in non-fiction, because despite all the disclaimers about the inadequacy of representation and how your text is not you and whatever, there is a person out there somewhere. But here are my thoughts. I will preface them (maybe unnecessarily or irrelevantly) with a note that for me, treating emotions as aesthetic objects is a way of working through them, of rendering them harmless (you could say anaesthetic, oddly enough) and beating them into submission. If they're really nasty I bash them into a sonnet. So if I'm responding more to form than to content don't take it as ignoring content, because I'm not. I'm trying to make it more obedient for you, is all.

*[...] It’s hard to speak for anyone else. *
Interesting that you start with this disclaimer (It’s hard) and then a sentence later another hesitation (It’s easy...), the need to keep to facts, to be honest. As if there is a need to choose words carefully and to tell the truth here, a danger of misrepresentation. Which there always is with writing, I suppose.

*These people who I’d never seen before—their lives looked so much fun, so warm and friendly. *
But those are edited lives. Nobody puts the bad stuff on Facebook. Of course, this is one of those things that you know intellectually, but knowing things intellectually doesn’t change how you feel.

*But that little part seems more like a whisper these days. It gets more and more quiet each time I have one of these episodes. The other part of me is dumb and inexperienced. *
got a little confused in this paragraph, think because you say “that little part” and then “the other part” but I think you’re referring to the same part at this moment. So the “little part” is also the dumb and inexperienced one, the responsible one, etc., yes? which feels a little counterintuitive at first, but I guess yeah, it makes sense that it’s the inexperienced one who follows instructions. Maybe connects to the later part about quitting the EMT job, and maybe it is this that undermines the responsible part.

 *I’m looking inside my eyes, jumping back and forth across the mirror’s black divide—left eye, right eye, left eye—thinking.*
I like the image here, how this split reflection seems to relate to the divided self previously described, as if that division becomes this banal, everyday thing

*I know the weight of what I'm thinking then, the texture of it—sometimes it becomes an image, a memory clipped and set to run on an endless loop: it is a sadness beyond words. *
Wonder if maybe you’re referring to a specific memory; like what is that image? and are you choosing not to say? Or maybe it is not specific at all, just the feeling.

* and I go looking for my weapons.*
want to know more about the weapons. Not sure if it refers to the alcohol/meds combo previously referenced or something else.

*At best, I was rusty.*
Transition to next paragraph is a bit of a jump, might help to mention in the above that you were taking the guy to a hospital you’d never been to before because [whatever reason]. Medical terms might be an issue if you're thinking of publishing, because certain dummies like me don't know what "s/t elevation" is.

*If you’re lucky there’s the moon. *
loved the above image, especially this line. Like usually we think of the moon as permanent, there whether we see it or not, but on this road even that slight comfort of a known, permanent world isn't a given. I’d break paragraph here to emphasize, and also because you shift the scene/topic after.

*could it have been a starry love in the making?*
I want a little follow-up to the question, maybe just a sentence saying how it wasn’t. Unless you're leaving out something steamy here.

*speed without limits, eighty miles and hour or more in one terrifying downward direction.*
Strong ending, bringing us back to that road. Again it feels like there’s something held back, though maybe in this case held back from yourself as well as from the reader, as if that thing you think you know very well is something you can’t quite bring yourself to look at either, so there’s all these distractions, these little things to  obsess over instead of whatever it is. Maybe refers back to that years-old sadness referenced earlier. 

Okay, this isn't even close to your crit-champion level, but I'll stop there.  Hope I have said something that can help you.  

(Also, only psychopaths don't get nervous at interviews, and nobody wants a psychopath for a radiologist.)


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## Jon M (Mar 26, 2013)

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## Deleted member 49710 (Mar 27, 2013)

As I was looking at your reply I found a nit and then remembered one I'd forgotten to mention.

*eighty miles and hour
*eighty miles an hour*

**I was so anxious, so choked of adrenaline*
choked on adrenaline?


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## Jon M (Mar 27, 2013)

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## Deleted member 49710 (Mar 27, 2013)

Hm. Think you were right to cut, not because the additional description is bad but because it's a kinda comforting image, counters the sense of scary destination-unknown driving that preceded. Also I like things simple.

moon appears full tonight, conveniently, if you're trying to remember what it looks like.


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## Jon M (Mar 27, 2013)

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## Narnia (Mar 27, 2013)

This is good.  You have a way of describing the ordinary day-to-day aspects of life that make living seem more real.  I can't really offer much in a way of critiques other than that I also caught 





> eighty  miles and hour or more in one terrifying downward direction.


  Should be eighty miles _an _hour.

Yes super excited that the snow is almost gone.  Ready for 60s this weekend.


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## Jon M (Mar 29, 2013)

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## Deleted member 49710 (Mar 29, 2013)

Jon M said:


> Hey lasm! Forgot to mention about s/t elevation -- this, to be classified as 'mere trivia', useful perhaps in an emergency situation where you find yourself on _Jeopardy_ facing such a question (totally could see it happening ) -- a heart attack is also sometimes called a stemi. Maybe you've heard that before. It's an acronym, STEMI. Means, *s*/*t* *e*levated *m*yocardial *i*nfarction, or, "serious trouble".


I will definitely make use of this information!

Jon M: Your sentences are far too short and look at this, you break paragraph like twice a page, it's ridiculous--
lasm: God, don't have a stemi, dude.


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## Jon M (Mar 29, 2013)

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