Young Writers Society

One day, deceased facebook pages will litter the internet, not of those who have died tragically young, but of those who lived out their entire lives and died peacefully. These memorials to their souls will be archived, along with the twitter accounts whose owners have tweeted their last tweet. Computers will pile up in a metal grave, melted into scraps and reused again, just as bodies will be put into the earth to nourish the soil, or be lost as dust in a gust of wind. The color in your cheeks and sharp wit will be preserved in photos, videos, blog postings, hundreds of thousands of text messages and emails. You and I will have left our mark on humanity, not by doing something monumental, as we wished, but as another of the million voices who has left their imprint in obscure posts online, next to images of cats in costumes and recipes, which will be studied by coming generations to understand our culture. Each flippant comment we post is a snapshot of our lives, as surely as an actual photo, preserving our mindset at one individual time, preserving us for as long as the internet exists, more permanently than a lusty carving in a tree.
Yet when we look into the sky, we realize the futility of our desires, for the universe is vaster than we could ever explore. We live on a small planet in a nondescript solar system in a spiraling galaxy amongst billions of other galaxies. When you take my hand, while lying on our backs in a starry field, we are the smallest of all, unable to stop the rotation of the earth or the pressures of gravity. Once the planet is swallowed by the heavy red sun, the universe will be no different than it was before; even the greatest king will not the remembered by cold and dark space. Our lives are so miniscule, yet I want to lie here with you until eternity, undying, greedy for a larger snatch of life and joy than I was assigned, even though I know that every second that goes by is a second lost.
We are both in college, studying to get high-paying jobs so that we might live together happily, so why does it feel like my heart is being wrenched out of my chest every second I am away from you? Why can I not lie here with my head on your chest, drawing patterns on your stomach, these next four years instead? We are of no interest to the universe. We were forgotten the day we were born, and each day we are growing older.

This is beautiful. It's a very original and heartfelt love poem. (Not here to review)

I agree, this is beautiful. In the last sentence of the first paragraph you wrote that instead of than. And in the second paragraph you left off an s after king. I didn't catch anything else, but you may want to reread one more time to check. As for the content, I loved it. the way you tie our generation's whole existence into facebook and twitter and email. then you go on to say how none of that will matter one day. And it was catchy and thought provoking. Anyway, now I'm just blabbering, so I will just say this is an amazing piece, keep writing!

I loved this.

First of all, your language is beautiful, yet witty in spots. I especially liked the line "drawing patterns on your stomach"; it reminded me of Imogen Heap's song "Between Sheets," which I love. Also, you (unlike most people) have actually discovered the arrogance and yet the insignificance of human beings, which is something that frequently gets me. I mean, humans think we are just so damned important, but really, we're not. Not much. So I like the whole message behind this, and I like the end - "our doings don't make a difference in the universe anyway, so why don't we just lie here and enjoy each others' presence?" It was like a love story, yet not. It was highly unique and very enjoyable. I don't even think I have any actual criticisms for this!

~Blue

Hello absolution,

First off, I'd like to say the piece is amazing. I thoroughly enjoyed it, I thought it was quite thought provoking and the way you executed it was breathtaking!

Improvements. Hmm.

I suppose I would have liked to be "in" the piece more. What I mean is that, yes, this expresses ideas and thoughts, and you even manage to highlight why we should care, so I applaud you. But somehow, I did not feel satisfied enough, I wanted more. More immediacy, more relevance.

The whole thing at first read like a lot of "somethings" a lot of generalities. Hundreds and thousands of videos, posts, and text messages and emails - but not a single example to show. I mean, this is posted as "General Articles", right? But it reads more like an essay.

Articles focus on concreteness. There is a here and a now with articles. There are people names, place names, dates, times, and scenes with articles.

I can see why you chose pronouns - you/I/we - I can see why. But, somehow, and perhaps this is just my opinion - I feel the piece will function better if you gave us a concrete person. Somehow I'd feel as if we would care more. As if it would ground us more into the story and what it implies.

The color in your cheeks and sharp wit will be preserved in photos

Clearly, when speaking of impact or when talking about an emotional level - this is one of the strongest lines, along with the ending. I feel it's precisely because you've given us a concrete image here. It seems as if you are constantly weaving back and forth - from general to specific - back and forth - and maybe that's my problem with the piece. Maybe that's what I mean when I say that I didn't feel it was enough - my head was just whipping back and forth. Perhaps it would be better to start with a generality and slowly narrow it to specific. And if you want to slowly weave back to general again - that could work too.

But this back and forth, back and forth, it leaves me wanting to plant my foot on the ground - yet I am constantly being swept away.

We are both in college, studying to get high-paying jobs so that we might live together happily, so why does it feel like my heart is being wrenched out of my chest every second I am away from you? Why can I not lie here with my head on your chest, drawing patterns on your stomach, these next four years instead? We are of no interest to the universe. We were forgotten the day we were born, and each day we are growing older.

Agh. This has been very difficult to review as I can't make up my mind. Part of it is that I LOVE this. When I get to the end, it's been worth it. A gold star for you simply for delivering with this ending.

And yet, I'm forced to having to look deeper into this to try and find something it lacks - The execution though - from facebook to universe to here with the lover. I wonder how it would read if it went from universe to facebook to lover? (Food for thought).

It pains me because I want to improve it - and yet I like it is enough to have it remain the same.

As an article, this will not do though, I can tell you that much. It just doesn't function as an article. Maybe as prose? or essay?

In any case, good luck to you, absolution.

Oh, and keep writing.

~ As always Audy

Hello! Happy Review Day!

This piece is very interesting. It actually started off with an intriguing discussion, and I was starting to think that was the main topic of the piece. xD Seeing as it lasted as long as it did. It was very interesting though, and I enjoyed it.

As an article itself, I don't see much structure in this. So I'm not going to review it as an article? It feels more like a piece of prose, and I have some tips on helping it in that perspective, so that's what I'm going to do! xD

This doesn't feel like a love letter. It's just some prose. Very pretty prose, but just prose. So the title doesn't really get to me like it probably should. I'd like to see a better title -- one that ties in that first paragraph with the whole point of this piece. A title that effectively ties the whole thing together, like a big bow on top of a Christmas present. It wraps it all up nicely!

I mentioned this before, but I do think the point of this piece got completely buried. In fact, I feel it ended very abruptly. You could have built off this in so many ways and made it more effective on the reader. The first two paragraphs got very... bloggy? They went on and on, and I could see where they were going, but they didn't feel like they were going in the direction you intended. xD They actually felt like article topics, like blog entries. Then it somehow tied in with a certain person at college, and I was so confused. It felt very out of place with the piece. The balance between metaphor and purpose is very off kilter.

So in the end, I'd say give me more of the story behind this piece. There's obviously a story, but it's not being told like the metaphors are in the first couple paragraphs. I'd like to see more point to the story, where the narrator is actually headed by writing something like this.

You've a good start though, so a little bit of work will polish this guy right up!

Keep writing!

Jabber, the One and Only!

This is certainly a very wonderful piece but I am going to tear it apart as best I can. If I were you I wouldn't expect much feedback from me on this because, well, there isn't a lot I could say.

absolution wrote:One day, deceased facebook pages will litter the internet, not of those who have died tragically young, but of those who lived out their entire lives and died peacefully. These memorials to their souls will be archived, along with the twitter accounts whose owners have tweeted their last tweet. Computers will pile up in a metal grave, melted into scraps and reused again, just as bodies will be put into the earth to nourish the soil, or be lost as dust in a gust of wind. The color in your cheeks and sharp wit will be preserved in photos, videos, blog postings, hundreds of thousands of text messages and emails. It may serve your point to mention that nobody will ever really look back at the old facebook pages and twitter pages and though you are preserved in the web you are not necessarily preserved in the memories of people. I don't know just seemed like something you could chip in there. You and I will have left our mark on humanity, not by doing something monumental, as we wished, but as another of the million voices who has left their imprint in obscure posts online, next to images of cats in costumes and recipes, which will be studied by coming generations to understand our culture. Each flippant comment we post is a snapshot of our lives, as surely as an actual photo, preserving our mindset at one individual time, preserving us for as long as the internet exists, more permanently and fully? than a lusty carving in a tree.
Yet when we look into the sky, we realize the futility of our desires, for the universe is vaster than we could ever explore. We live on a small planet in a nondescript solar system in a spiraling galaxy amongst billions of other galaxies. The transition here from talking about the vastness to your own life is a little sharp and sudden. I don't know if you could maybe smooth it down a little bit. One of the things that I think makes it so sharp is that, until this point, you never really mentioned yourself and now you are talking about yourself and your life in specific.When you take my hand, while lying on our backs in a starry field, we are the smallest of all, unable to stop the rotation of the earth or the pressures of gravity. Once the planet is swallowed by the heavy red sun, the universe will be no different than it was before; even the greatest king will not the remembered by cold and dark space. Our lives are so miniscule, yet I want to lie here with you until eternity, undying, greedy for a larger snatch of life and joy than I was assigned, even though I know that every second that goes by is a second lost.
We are both in college, studying to get high-paying jobs so that we might live together happily, so why does it feel like my heart is being wrenched out of my chest every second I am away from you? Why can I not lie here with my head on your chest, drawing patterns on your stomach, these next four years instead? We are of no interest to the universe. We were forgotten the day we were born, and each day we are growing older.

Okay well that is it. Sorry. I know it is a sucky review.