No Smoking - Comments

This was a story that made me remember how it was when I chose to quit smoking. It definitely isn't an easy process. I wasn't a heavy smoker but still, its the fact that you are getting rid of nicotine out of your system and dealing with the withdrawal daily that hurts.

The tapping of the pen seems very relevant to why James does it and it mentally shows a good picture of what the character looks like while doing this in a time for a very bad craving of a cigarette. Agitation is a huge symptom of nicotine withdrawal and it got me curious to how the other, Robbie, was going to figure out how to solve this for his good friend in order to get the guy's mind off of a single cigarette.

And...then comes the lollipops! Very clever to keeping the mind off of cigarettes. But then I let out a small snort of a laugh when James went back to pen-tapping haha. I sure hope it gets better for those two.

Well done with this short story! It was enjoyable c:

I'm here as a judge from the Magazine's contest. I'm a bit late, though, so I do apologise for that!

How annoying James is can really be felt in the first chapter, with how Robbie tells how there's no pattern or rhythm to it and that it's just tap, tap, tap. I have to admit, I'm James - or at least, was - and was always tapping my pen and when I wasn't tapping my pen, it was being chewed in my mouth, or if it was a ballpoint pen then I would be constantly clicking it. I can imagine how I annoyed people.

Giving up smoking is so common but is also probably one of those resolution that are broken most often, too. It's easy to say "oh, I'll quit" but most people don't take into account that it takes willpower to get over the nicotine craving. But it's good that James is attempting to get out of that bad habit, even if he does annoy Robbie in the process!

Ah, haha. Robbie tries to be kind, both to his sanity and James, but it only ends up working a short while. I guess that's what happens, though. I like how this had a bit of humour in what could easily be a real situation that any of us could deal with. I loved reading this, so thank you for writing it.

I'm here as a judge for the Magazine contest!

That first line is basically me. I am that person that annoys everyone by tapping my pen against the edge of things, mostly when I haven't had or don't have access to anything with caffeine in it. I can kind of empathise with James on that front, because it really is this kind of pent-up energy that you just cannot stop without getting some of whatever it is that you crave -- as I said above, for me it's caffeine which isn't even nearly as bad as nicotine so I can only imagine a tiny bit of what he's going through. I think you describe his inability to stay still and his desire to keep busy (I'm assuming he's trying because it seems as if he's trying desperately to keep his mind off of cigarettes!) perfectly. You really show what he's going through.

I think that stopping smoking is one of those resolutions that people make all the time (I actually have a friend that already failed to keep that resolution) but I don't think anyone pays attention to how hard it really is to do. This story kind of sheds a little bit of light onto that and I think that's really awesome. It isn't something that's talked about very often -- we just tend to go oh, stop smoking, it's bad for you but no one acknowledges that it isn't as simple as just not smoking. Showing that James is having a hard time of it when attempting to quit is something I've never seen in a story before, and I'm really glad that you chose to go down this route with the story. Awesome job!