ETA: Julie Leto said: “before they attempted free form poetry, they had to master the forms”

I think this an essential point, Julie. You have to learn to apply the rules before you can leave them behind.

This is a very astute and well-read group of readers who show up here on Saturdays. I hope the author takes their comments to heart.

But this didn’t work for me. Too much pointless info and not enough imagery. When this type of writing is done right–at least in my experience with his stuff; I haven’t read any of the other authors mentioned–it pulls you along like a current you couldn’t swim out of even if you wanted to.

I’ve read things like this before, and the authors were most definitely not mentally ill, they were however very young, mostly early teens, without the skill or experience to quite manage the world building and pacing and writing just as fast as they can. In some cases with no patience or care for the “minor” details trying to get to THE SCENE be it sex, action, some great comedy as fast as they can.

I’ve tried to help edit things like this before, namely my thirteen year old daughter’s creative writing assignments for school written down in such a rush that it is enough to make your eyes cross and water and head explode trying to sort the dang thing out. It’s enough to make me want to tear out and the go rounds of I don’t care what’s good enough for your teacher, do it right have ended with huffing puffing stomping and door slamming on my daughter’s part seem endless. There’s hope though because the next time she comes up with an assignment to be looked over, what she huffed and puffed and thought I was a big meanie about the time before has been corrected within her writing and it’s on to the next “battle”.

With your average schools being more and more concerned about teaching to the tests that help decide funding and school ranking, failing schools getting cut on funding, not to mention the “whole language phonetics” with spelling not worried about as long as the word is comprehensible/tell what the child meant or concern about sentence structure or formal writing style –after all on the test they only need to be able to read the paragraph and answer the multiple choice questions for the paragraph.

I’m hazarding no guesses on age of this author…just saying the general basics of any sort of writing have been slipping away when it comes to average students, who may have all the imagination in the world, but do not qualify for AP classes or cannot afford to go to one of the better schools for years.

There is imagination there–good bad or otherwise I can’t sort enough out to say. No matter how unskilled the delivery there are certainly enough details that it seems whatever this is is quite vivid in the author’s mind even if the end result is difficult nearly impossible to read at this point in time. Time, practice, reading, more practice, more reading and even more practice and reading are necessary.

This author simply has not the grasp of technical skill to clearly get their story across yet. They need to learn the basics, or relearn as the case maybe. There’s something there, but the skill level of the writing and story craft makes it impossible to tell what it is good or bad. Skills can be acquired with time, patience and determination.

All the technical skill in the world doesn’t make cliched trite crap any less cliched trite crap, simply pleasant on the eyes and readable. Passion for the story and imagination, ability to make the characters breathe are necessary for a *good* story. Writing skill is necessary for a *readable* story. This particular author needs to concentrate on the writing skill to even begin to judge the actual content/creative capability of the story. They may be very capable of a good story, they need to work on readable first.

Skills can be acquired, including the skills of common courtesy. An honest assessment of this has to be painful to the author, flinging around assumptions of mental illness is going a bit far.

eta: yes, I realize the lack of grammatical perfection in my comment. my excuse? up all night with youngest and functioning purely on caffeine until I can go to bed. looked at comment after it was posted and decided I’m too darn tired to fix the obvious.

This writing completely baffles me.

Experimental writing is ten times as hard as mainstream writing. Every word in an experimental novel is carefully selected.

Read it out loud. If you cannot read it out loud, edit the stuff you stumble over. Then read it out loud again. Kathy Acker reads out loud like a dream. It has to read naturally, no matter how out-there and wacky and edgy you want it to be.

That said, I couldn’t track it. There was too much going on for me. Take one character (at this point I don’t mind which) and start in his or her viewpoint, and give me what they’re DOING instead of a lot of background information.

After you’ve revised this as the other commenters suggest, I think it could turn out amazing.

My take.

Don’t refer to your own work as “sharp-edged” or “hilarious” or “stunningly well-written” or “ground-breaking” or any number of other complimentary phrases. It automatically makes any industry professional you show it to assume it’s going to be crap.

Use more words.

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TELLING

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But freakishly at the same time, Vienna was hailing a black cab with Nick following, watching, then tracking behind from a safe distance. The cab’s ‘on duty’ light came on as it pulled over so Nick ran back to his own car with a head full of determined spears, ready to pounce with questions when she reached her destination, a destination that Nick was unaware of.

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SHOWING

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Freakishly, at the same time Vienna was hailing a black cab on Main, Nick was trying for a baby blue one on State Street.

No luck. The cab’s ‘on duty’ light came on as it pulled over.

“Damn it to hell.” Nick ran back to his own car with a head full of determined spears, ready to pounce with questions when she reached her destination.

First he had to catch her. I spend my life one pace behind. He swung into traffic, following the reflection of her tail lights in the rain-slicked streets. No idea where she was going. None.

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If you take time to give us the step by step and the visuals and the internals you let the reader ‘live’ the story.

Sorry.

It might work a little better if you just took your main character and opened with her. Stay in her POV, break up your long paras into nice readable ones, let us come to care about her problem, keep your interesting imagery but don’t overwhellm us or your character with it. Don’t give up. You seem to have fun, writing. That’s important. I hear too many writers gripe about how they hate the process. True, it is work, but no cause for such misery.

I agree with posters who say you should read more, and study what you read, to get a better feel for characterization. A lot of interesting quirks do not necessarily make an interesting character.
Good luck.

Those people are not bad writers. They are not bad people. They are not even stupid people.

What they are is schizophrenic.

Oh an excellent clarification, thank you.

Given that my first thought upon reading was that it was inevitable that the boys-from-Yale would someday offer an entry, and that this was their effort, I’m happy to accept your interpretation.
Mental illness makes the writing excusable.

*hopes so*