Hatrack River Writers Workshop: This place.. about immigration detention in Australia

This is topic This place.. about immigration detention in Australia in forum Fragments and Feedback for Short Works at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by Shadowen (Member # 2840) on :

In This Place, time cannot be measured by the passing of hours, minutes and seconds. In This Place most people measure time by degrees of despondency and hopelessness. Here depression is as palatable as acid, It is alive, in This Place it thrives and evolves. Feeding of angst and fear, it drips itself into the fuel tank of ones soul; eroding and contaminating the very essence that is “I”. Each droplet contains a mixture of fear, uncertainty and a special additive that is guaranteed to take away any feelings of self worth an individual may have. Time in This Place is measured by the dripping of Depression. And when it has completely filled that special tank of “I”, time has no purpose at all, it becomes merely an extension of the moment, and This Place is all there is.

I have now left this place, but it has not left me, its essence befouling detritus has impregnated my being and turned my mind into a haven for its spawn; paranoia, anxiety and panic. These three emotional deviants have conspired to destroy whatever sanity I have managed to retain; they have put my mind into a spincycle of emotional turmoil that will not stop.

Posted by tchernabyelo (Member # 2651) on :

Some of the writing here is powerful, but there's just too much of it; the cascade of images rapidly becomes numbing. I also wonder about some of the word choices; for instance, you say "depression is as palatable as acid", but that seems odd - depression, surely, is never palatable - and I wondered if you meant "palpable".

Definitely, in the second paragraph, I think you need some sort of contrast, but instead we get more of the same. "its essence-befouling detritus has impregnated my being" is just too much, and when the narrator talks about having his or her sanity destroyed, there is a worrying temptation to conclude that the effect of the particular insanity in this instance is to over-write everything...

Seriously; you can write powerfully. Just don't push it quite so hard, right up front. You're hitting us over the head with a brick, while not telling us anything about who the narrator is, nor where this story is going. I doubt I'd read on, for fear I was going to be exposed to this intensity of writing for the entire length of the piece. But give me a clue it isn't just unremitting descriptions of misery and depression, and your writing might draw me onwards.

Posted by Mechwarrior (Member # 2796) on :

Dang, Tc up there hit most of the bases. Write for you readers and not an award committee. One of the keys to writing is amassing a strong vocabulary and then using the right words at the right times. There's a rule (White & Strunk?), "If a simple word fits, use it."

To extend some of Tc's comments about the overwriting. If you describe every little thing with the most sublime descriptions how is the reader going to see what you really think is important?

Finally, be careful of overused, overblown simile, metaphor, and analogy. There's an annual contest each year for Worst Prose. It almost always goes to bad metaphors, etc. Like 50 cent words, only use them when you need them.

Posted by J (Member # 2197) on :

"If a simple word fits, use it."

B-R-A-V-O

Posted by jinkx (Member # 2798) on :

I think a good dose of Strunk and White will do you alot of good. You have to find that balance between, "Jack sat." and "Jack buckled his exiguous appendages with a gasp of lassitude and alleviation and settled himself upon the woody planks of the portico bench, inadvertently brushing away an insignificant piece of foliage in the process."

You've certainly mastered the art of being descriptive, but now you've got to tone it down a little before you can go on. There's only so much of it that the reader can take.

Posted by Shadowen (Member # 2840) on :

Thankyou for the advice, this time of my life was very traumatic, I spent 18 months in that hell hole, but I do understand where you are coming from. I do sometimes get carried away with emotional descriptions when I write. Simpler is better, sometimes simple words just dont seem to give the right "punch" But I will try to be more reader friendly with my writing.

Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :

Go ahead and let yourself get carried away in your first draft. Then edit it to make it less overwhelming to the reader.

Posted by tchernabyelo (Member # 2651) on :

Shadowen - I've just read your intro (prompted by your remark about having spent 18 months in "that hell hole"). The knowledge that you're beign directly autobiographical here, and your background, puts a very interesting context round the piece.

If you want readers, I'd be interested. How long is the piece?