October 14th, 2014 at 08:06am
Anyway, moving on. I'm super happy that my contest inspired this because it was wonderful. I felt the heartbreak, the frustration, the longing, and the regret, I truly did. I felt the love the narrator had for this boy and I felt the regret that ran so deep. I was hoping so much that there would be a happy ending to this as there was a happy beginning, but I'm a hopeless romantic so I would, heh. Going back to my assumption that he passed away, I think I might have picked up on an (imaginary, perhaps) implication that way because I'm a romantic and I want to think that the only reason he didn't pick up was because he was gone. "He’d probably already found someone else anyways. Or so I assumed given every time I tried to call him he didn’t answer." After I read that second sentence, I immediately prepared myself for the narrator to say that he died in a car accident or something so I had set myself up for something that never came. I'm not sure if this was just me or you were implying something but nevertheless, I ended up doing it so that was a my bad.
The only problem I had was that you didn't use enough punctuation, I think. Where there should have been commas or semi-colons, there was nothing so a lot of sentences were run-on and didn't sound right in my head. Some of the internal monologue got mashed together and sounded clumsy because there weren't pauses, and the tone of the story didn't strike me as manic and quick so it seemed out of place and awkward to read at some points. If you ever need help with that, try reading the sentences out loud; if you pause, you should add a comma at the least (semi-colons are admittedly tricky). It's a trick I was taught when I was told that I had two extremes—I either didn't use enough commas or I used too much, so reading it out loud and figuring out where you pause naturally might help you.
Also, at one point, you had a slight mistake that stood out like a sore thumb: I know you’re not going to answer, your probably off with someone else tonight. In that context, it should have been "you're" rather than "your" but I think you already know that.
All in all, that was a really wonderful read, though, and I loved the story behind it, even though it was slightly depressing.
1. I'm so happy that you enjoyed it! And I'm really glad that I entered the contest and able to come up with such an amazing story. I mean I feel like lately I've been in a rut. I haven't been able to write anything I actually liked for the life of me, so writing this and knowing that you thoroughly enjoyed it means a lot.
2. Honestly while I was writing it I was thinking to myself that he died, but I never actually wrote it in. So it's just one of those things that's left up to the reader to decide for themselves. If someone wants to believe that he's still alive and just moved on they can. Or like the both of us they can believe he died. It's just something that I'm leaving up to the reader to decide for themselves
3. I really appreciate your feedback! And I didn't really proofread it before I submitted it, which I usually do. But I didn't, I didn't even really fix a nice fancy layout like I usually do because the due date kind of sneaked up on me and I just wanted to get it posted before the deadline. Regardless of that though thank you for the feedback, I really do appreciate it so much! Anyways it's super late where I am right now, and I just wanted to reply before I went to bed and all, but tomorrow I'll probably read through it and add in the punctuation that I need.
4. Lord, I cannot believe I did that!