Peer Review 4-26-11

amie

Dinosaurs  was an interesting piece of writing, it would go great in a short story book somewhere. Very cute and clever, an effective method of storytelling. Coachillin’ was very well written as well. I want to go! It was interesting how you started on such a low note and then switched it up by the end. This makes for interesting reading, everyone likes a happy ending.

Kayla

Even I Have Them was a beautifully crafted submission. You have an incredible ability to tell stories and you use the language very effectively. All Conquers Love was a very nice piece of writing as well. I enjoyed the way you used the spacing between the dialogues to control the flow of the story. This method seems to force me to concentrate more on the dialogue because the spacing slows me down and I read more completely what is being said.

Kimberly

Childhood Wants was a very well written narration. I like the way the pictures and short paragraphs break up the story and also lend such great detail to what is being described. The message is a very heartwarming story as well and who doesn’t like some of that every once in a while. I read Prompt 50 several times and still think somehow I just read an advertisement. Here we go again with the “graphic novel” I will hold my tongue today on the ridiculousness of comics, in fact I won’t even mention their childishness. I won’t say any of these things because I did like this submission because the characters were funny looking and they made me smile. Good jobJ

wOULD HAVE BEEN COOLER WITH PICTURES

I found love for all, ultimate serenity, actually felt the touch of God, god reached out a helping hand to get me back in the right hole. This woman is a saint. , shes a caregiver saving lives daily at Banner Health. She cooks she cleans, she folds all of the whites and never loses a sock! We immediately moved in together and started a real grown up type life. We bought two beautiful puppies and one fat lazy cat and boom we were a family, we had children to care for. She took the engagement ring and said yes. This one, This one, I will grow old and die with this woman. We will always be perfect and happy! I will trust her and her judgment absolutely, she loves me and has never a bad intention towards me. Trust is the single most important thing in a relationship, and I trust her ABSOUTELY, it feels so good

THIS SPACE IS SUPPOSED TO BE FILLED WITH PICTURES THAT i COULD NOT MAKE PASTE, MY APOLOGIES i THINK IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN COOL BUT ITS ALREADY 12:15 SO I GIVE UP:)

But she lied. She was seeing him while wearing my ring. No more love, house, pets, clean laundry; I burned that whole place to the ground. My once beloved and him are making a lot of noise in the trunk of my cay. Might be uncomfortable laying on top of that shovel, axe, duct tape….oh ye the cutting torch set. There will be no more lies tonight. I will learn from her pain and find a better victim, I mean girlfriend next week. Hold on tight you cheating cunt this ride to the remote desert will definitely be bumpy!

Peer Review 4-19-11

Jamie

“Instant Classic” was a very entertaining and well written piece. You could have added more to it but that would be unnecessary it is very effective just the way it’s written. This is not a story that requires a lot of details because the subject is very simple and you did a good job of getting to the point, the humorous point, that you quit in an interesting and original manner. The title worked well to tie the piece together. Great job.  Your writing on graphic novels was very good also. You presented your opinions and facts in a very organized and easy to read and follow manner and were quite thorough in your analysis. I wouldn’t change a thing except your opinion, because I don’t like graphic memoirs which means that you shouldn’t care for them AT ALL because you should be agreeing with me cause it’s all about me. Right? Great job this weekJ

Kayla

Your writing in the “graphic Novels and Memoirs” was amazing. You presented your views in a very effective manner and perfectly achieved the requirements of the prompt. “Orange Baseball” is a great title for that story. You conveyed not only the story but some of the feelings and emotions tied into the event. Your use of pictures tied the whole thing together and did a great job of supplying detail and helped the reader to understand and picture the events happening. Great writing this week as usual.

Kimberly

OK so I read your graphic novels piece and I’m not offended on a personal level, even though I’ve never been called “highbrow” before. I’m just using this space to comment on the writing from a professional peer perspective, a perspective that only disagrees with your perspective because you are wrong. That being said your writing skills and illustrations were very effective in conveying your opinion and argument which again just to remind you are totally wrong. The use of the dictionary description was useful and was a good idea and it would have been very effective in supporting your writing and opinion if your opinion had not been totally wrong. Now please do not be offended at the fact I’m starting an argument with you in a format where you cannot respond, I only do this because it makes it easier to win this particular argument. It would be more difficult to tell you you are all wrong about the graphic novel if you were able to rapidly disagree with me so believe me that I do get great personal satisfaction in telling you, in this format, that you are just completely wrong. Your writing, brilliant, your opinion and conclusion, just wrong. (Please do not be offended, I’m really just messing with you, thanks for the opportunity to make myself laugh)  “Boring Job” was a very powerful writing. I loved your descriptions of the people involved; you are very talented at these descriptions. The story sucked me in and then surprised me at the end; this is exactly what most people want in a story. Great job on this one, especially the descriptions this week, I feel like I know these people from your writing, that’s awesome.

Prompt #49 It most assuredly takes up a particuler spot in space

Upon reviewing the excerpts mentioned in writing prompt 49 I extrapolated the following conclusions.

Text:

I found the storyline in both of these writings to be fairly interesting and easy to follow and grasp for myself and the average excerpt reading American. They were relevant to the situation exhibited and conveyed intent to be written by the writer, this is assuming of course there was in fact a writer to construct these particular word structures that I have just reviewed. I did not care for the font that these particular word structures that were written by the writers , used. If I were the determining individual whose monetary and prestige indices were summarily decided upon primarily by their net yearly monetary income, then I would personally and professionally determine not the aforementioned font but would assuredly have better than a %99 mathematical chance of determining a more typeset type serif font to convey the previously intended product that would ensure my continued predetermined and decidedly best monetary interest.

Graphics:

I was quite simply easily enthralled by the amazing  gift of the particular individuals who performed the labor and the intensely vital task  of conveying the true essence of what is to me a spot taken up, a void filled in an immensely and ever-growing scientific phenomena all of us whom rely on to supply the life giving air that we breathe, sunshine that we feel on our amazing  glorious skin and the clean hydrogen based structure that we utilize to remove all the heat from and freeze into the frozen  structures that some individuals refer to as ice cubes and enjoy  in their own particular brand of liquid refreshment or frozen concoction. I also immensely particularly enjoyed the colors utilized in the illustration section of these excerpts. The fantastic contrast of the black and white, that really is pretty dam special.

In general I John Smith do hereby swear that the graphic novel or “comic book” is not my favorite method of writing excerpts.  It does work well for advertising pricks who are taking over this country and sending all the work to China. Those aforementioned pricks do a much better job at creating graphics and text than the two authors that I referred previously and are found in writers Prompt 49. There was humor in the stories that I liked and would possibly like to emulate in my writing someday.

Prompt #45 The Boring Job

Working at Exhibits Southwest the last thing you want to be is under the influence of mind altering substances. The work involves every power tool you can imagine being utilized in a custom woodworking shop, every piece of equipment that is used there as part of your daily task list will literally remove body parts in an extremely short period of time if the operator loses concentration or just makes a simple mistake. You see, every one of these machines comes with a slew of safety features and guards all of which have been removed in an effort to make them faster and easier to use. Some have even been rewired to bypass the automatic shutdown feature that was included that would render the equipment inoperable if the safety guards were removed. For example the blade guard on the chop saw, this particular saw has a 10 inch blade that is designed to very rapidly cut through wood up to 12 inches wide. The guard has been removed because without it you can literally cut through wood as fast as you can lever the blade up and down, approximately 40 times per minute. You get on this saw and chop long pieces of wood, or non-ferrous metal, into short pieces of wood, or non-ferrous metal, at a very rapid pace. This is a production shop and the more you produce the more you get paid. With the blade guard in place the production number drops to around 15 pieces per minute, the math and the point here are very simple.

The table saw, perhaps the most dangerous and notorious saw for removing fingers, also has a blade guard, or I guess it did when it was first bought, but it is long gone now. This saw cuts sheet goods, 4x8 sheets of plywood, MDF etc. It will cut through ¾ inch material pretty much as fast as you can feed it into the blade. Now I have been talking about wood and metal up to this point but take a second to ponder if you will, if these blades can cut through hard woods as fast as the operator can move them then you must realize that they would cut through human flesh and bone just as easily. And these are just two of the machines in a shop full of machines. Now if you were going to be operating this type of equipment all day long every day with no safety guards in place you would probable want to be as clear headed as possible and paying very close attention to what you were doing. You might possibly want to call OSHA at some point and report that this place was in violation and people’s safety was being put at risk.

You might, but you wouldn’t. You wouldn’t because the only reason people work at places like this, the only reason some people are attracted to this kind of work environment(besides a pretty good paycheck) is that because at this place as long as you are producing and making money for the company you can do pretty much whatever you want. And what the whole crew I worked with wanted was to get as high as motherfucking possible. We were a very close knit group who spent our work hours working together and our off duty hours sitting at the pub talking mostly about work. Out of the 9 of us at least 4(myself included) were pretty much geniuses and during those pub hours we came up with ways to get more work done in less time and therefor more money in our pockets.

So we showed up most mornings for work still drunk from the many shots consumed the night before. We smoked weed openly at all times and did just about every other mind altering substance known to man at one time or other and as often as possible. To be honest all of us were pretty much wrecked near out of our minds every single day. We would have gotten DUI’s for driving but man did we get a lot of work done. During my 1.5 years there no one lost a finger to the saws or was injured more than a Band-Aid could handle. Even the unskilled labor was pulling in around $800 a week (did I mention we didn’t pay taxes either). It was the stupidest most irresponsible immature work experience I’ve ever had and I still look back on it longingly and sometimes refer to it as “the good old days”. I don’t know if you have ever done “magic mushrooms” but the real question is, have you ever operated a table router on “magic mushrooms”. If you haven’t I would probably suggest that you never try, probably suggest. If you are one of us, one of the few the proud the twisted, then man you got to try that.

Peer Review 4-12-11

Jamie

“Injustice” was a very good writing with a great subject. You did a good job of describing the scene and I felt the frustration of the observer and the young man. My only advice would be to possibly play up the discrimination angle a little more. Not that the kid was black but that he was targeted. You used some narration and sarcasm to achieve this well but I feel it could be played up a little more to evoke more emotion in the reader.  No complaints at all about “Differences” you did a great job with the writing and with following the prompt instructions about keeping yourself out of the story. Nice job and entertaining as well.

Kayla

“Invisible Gag” was a very powerful writing. The spacing was effective to separate the separate characters. Sad subject but great writing. “Pure Intelligence” was great for the effective writing style and the subject matter. Once again I cannot find anything to suggest to improve on in your writing, and I’m not just being lazy you are really good. I think you are out of my league and I thoroughly enjoy your stories.

Kimberly

That is awesome, I was thinking about peer reviews last week after I submitted them and I finally came up with a complaint about yours, they are too damn long! I am just kidding of course (you seem like the type of person who would not be offended by a little razzing). And the first thing I read this week is an apology up front that this is going to be a long writing! Long but well worth the time, both of your pieces last week were incredibly well written. You choose subjects that you know about and seem to be passionate about and it works well. Y you use excellent descriptions and adjectives (I think that’s what they are called) and I enjoy reading everything you write. What to complain about? I don’t know, and I mean that I’m not just taking the easy way out. Maybe break the mold and write about something a little lighter, put in some humor, I know you have used humor in the past but I’m thinking about a whole piece that is just silly or off the wall, just something different from your usual style. Wait a minute comics and star trek ARE sillyJ Just kidding again of course, PLEASE don’t be offended. Great job last week

Prompt #43 Injustice

He is just an 11 year old boy trying to do the right thing. He knows that when he comes home with his homework already completed dad will be happy and will tell him “great job, I’m proud of you son”. That is why he is sitting here now, on the curb, in the school parking lot, after school, trying so hard to hurry through his homework so he will have it completed before he goes home to see dear old dad.

            Homework has been an issue for this sweet kid all year. Why do they pile on so much mundane practice work every single day that reviews the concepts he has spent all day diligently learning? He sees all of the grown-ups come home from their days work and they don’t have to spend another hour doing more work. He gets up early every morning just like they do. He works hard all day long at his job for 7 hours, 7 straight hours, that is a lot of work for a kid. And then this, more work when he goes home at night. Dad gets off work and he gets to drink beer and watch T.V. Mom comes home and gets to go on facebook. He goes home and he gets to do homework?

            So here he sits, just trying to get it done before he gets home, he is so close. One more page of math problems and he can clock out for his day. He can get a “good job” and a pat on the back then he is free to go play. Damn wind keeps blowing his paper while he tries to balance it on his knees, just a small boy sitting on a curb trying to do the right thing.

            “What the hell are you doing” dad says in his mean voice. “School has been out for 20 minutes, why aren’t you home, make me walk all the way up here looking for you”. “Been hanging out playing with your friends haven’t you, you know its homework first”. “Get up right now and get your ass home”.

            His face flushes with embarrassment and his heart rate increases. He was so close and just got wrapped up in what he was doing, his goddam homework. “I was just trying to finish my homework before I got home so it would make you happy dad” he stammers as he tries to get his books and papers into his backpack.

            “I don’t care; you are supposed to come straight home after school. All you want to do is play with those friends of yours. You know homework comes first before you go play”.

            “But I was trying to do my homework before I got home “ tears are now forming in his eyes and he realizes he has done something wrong, or at least wrong in dad’s eyes. It’s the fucking homework. The homework, he will never get it all right or done fast enough or done at the right table or done neat enough. He was just trying to get it done the easy way today and here we go again with the trouble. The homework, the fucking homework, he wishes he could just get his dads job.