Would somebody please read these few paragraphs for me?

[Greensleeves]

it's the opening bit to my novel which I'm working on in a really disorganised and patchy fashion - it's a novel about an autistic woman who suffers a breakdown, and her road to recovery, her way of looking at the world and her obsessions and phobias, with a backdrop of her studies in early modern witch-beliefs (drawing parallels between individual and aggregate psychology around mysticism/magical thinking/primal fears etc) and feminist critical theory, focusing a lot on her troubled relationship with her mother who probably also had autism but wasn't recognised - hard to explain but probably quite poncy

I know it's narcissistic but I haven't got anyone IRL that I want to embarrass myself in front of...

if it's awful adolescent doggerel then please TELL me

but tell me gently

here goes



I have a strange and powerful relationship with clothes. It?s visceral, carnal; real love, equally real loathing. I could browse the whole spectrum of human emotions, just rifling through the reels in a dressmakers? shop. Clothes are intoxicating. Close your eyes and breathe slowly. Listen. A swirling bell-shaped skirt, peppermint satin, cool, light, fluid, rippling over your legs in the summer sunshine. A chocolate velvet party dress, shirred bronze in candlelight, brushing your face like the wings of a moth for an instant before falling into place about your body with the warm weight of luxury. A smoky grey felt glove lying on a polished oak floor, slim-fingered, reposing in a gesture of languid assent.


Architecture lends us a man-made world, a skilful illusion borne out of our innate fear of abandonment. Our minds are dwarfed and derailed by the complexity of Nature?s own constructive genius, we struggle like a child in an 11+ exam required to ?continue the pattern 98723436287678891467?. Our intuition tells us that randomness is a falsehood and that there must be a formula, a logic, and tells us also that our brains are simply too rudimentary to perceive it yet ? millions of years lie between us and the truth. To second-guess evolution is a dangerous game ? would you hand a four year old a butcher knife? Our deepest fears, dramatised most eloquently in the Book of Genesis, revolve around the fear of human beings acquiring and inevitably misusing the mathematical language of Nature. When God threw that apple at Newton, he should have picked it up and examined it ? he might have seen the marks of Adam?s teeth.


So we inhabit a crudely pixellated landscape of flat colours and right angles, a world chopped up like a toddler?s dinner into bite-sized blocks, smoothly interacting before our eyes like a perfect game of Tetris. Our urban super-reality is designed to support and enclose us in an illusion of safety ? buildings define our limits, they mark out our territory and direct our movements. They are the unblinking stewards on the periphery of our vision, shouting out instructions; dress codes, appropriate noise levels, a visual autocue of the expectations which lie within. Buildings can hold us dear in an unending embrace, keep us warm and dry, shield us from the terrifying complexity and sheer scale of ?outside?, or they can grip, punish and isolate us when we transgress. And when they crumble, our instinctive selves coil and leap with fear and fascination.

[Greensleeves]

I hadn't heard of "youwriteon.com", I'll go look!

[NotQuiteCockney]

I will send you stuff, but I have a complicated system of changes. Oh, I'll send you the two little bits that are finished-ish. (DH always reviews things first, once I'm happy with them. Then more reviewing by me, etc etc.)

[Raggydoll]

i second lurker of the universe... the writing is very professional. When reading early drafts or first writing it is usually easy to spot an amatuer - it is not the case here even in the early stages it seems very polished to me.

[vonsudenfed]

I've had a look at YouWriteOn, and even the design gave me a headache - but I also think that you have to spend a lot of time reviewing other people's work (even stuff that isn't your kind of thing) to get reviewed yourself. It works well if you are doing popular (i.e. commercial) stuff, but I'm not sure that so many people there might get what you are doing.

I'm a member of WriteWords - you can try it out for free, but you have to pay a small fee per year - which is much more like a writing group. You join a group of people doing the same sort of thing as you, and crit each other's work; I've found the comments v sensible and helpful there, and there are also good forums about getting published and so on.

Although if there is one round you, a real life writing group is the best of all -mine (back in the day) really changed the standard of what I was doing...

[NotQuiteCockney]

The OU does good courses, too. I'm doing one at CityLit these days, which is good as well. We might end up with a real life writing group, out of that.

I like the strangers element of YouWriteOn. I gather you can say 'this isn't my cup of tea' of something you get asked to review. And for every review you do, you get the right to get something of yours reviewed.

I like the fact that this system means people aren't stuck in a 'X is popular, so I must say nice things about their work' mode. That being said, I worry that the calibre of the critiques might not be great, people might be lazy or slapdash? Dunno. I quite like doing critiques, but it is probably hard work for many people.

It's good to know that WriteWords is good, I might give it a go, I'm not sure what I'm doing about writing when this class finishes next month.

[Greensleeves]

just been reading back through your comments NQC, you kick the shit - there are several bits I wasn't happy with which I can just change to accommodate your suggestions, it's moved things on for me. Will email later re. the other stuff and will also dosome detailed critiquiing of your pieces - looking damn good, on initial appraisal

I am slightly scared of the critiquiing websites and other writers, I am a total virgin at this stuff, but I will pluck up the courage and have a go...

[Greensleeves]

god that post sucked, my typing needs work

[vonsudenfed]

NQC - who is teaching the course at City? I did one a while back, and made a very good friend out of it- and a few of us did carry on meeting to crit each others work for a while too.

[NotQuiteCockney]

Oh, I noticed on my email that I had a typo in the first para - good sign if I'm critiquing, eh?

Yeah, I don't know how brutal people are, on YouWriteOn or wherever. I have been brought around to the 'find something nice to say' school of thought. I don't know if people just go 'I hate this, it sucks!' if it's not to their taste, though.

Glad to hear my suggestions are useful - having a new POV on a piece can really help.

It's Wendy Brandmark who's teaching. She's ok - but not great, I think. She has some interesting ideas. But we can only do pieces of up to 800 words in class, which is a bit pointless. I mean, I max out around there, so it's good for me, but if you want critiques of longer pieces, well, you're a bit stuck.

[Litchick]

First can I say how brave of you it is to do this.
I am a member of a writing circle but we are very small and trusted iyswim.
You can definitely write and should keep it up.
I'm an author so I can give you all the gen on getting published etc - very hard but absiolutely NOT impossible.
However what you need to do first and foremost is finish the book. Don't start tinkering until you have written The End. At that point you can polish, decide what goes where etc. I have seen so many novels never get finished because people start tinkering too early.
That said, there is nothing wrong with getting some feedback midway just to boost your confidence. This is what I do with my group.
Does any of this make sense.

[warthog]

i;ve read a few snippets. i think they're brilliant! esp. the environmental health one. the child abuse one i can't stomach because i find that extremely upsetting. but i think your writing style is great - easy to read, and you really draw me in.

please finish one, get it published and then tell us so we can buy!

the first one, i did find a bit abstract. i'm not sure what point you're trying to get across, but then i have baby brain at the mo...

[vonsudenfed]

Did the email get through? Let me know if not, and I will try again.

NQC - what kind of stuff are you writing? My class was with Linda Leatherbarrow, and she was OK, although there were some slightly odd characters in our class, which was one of the reasons I gave up! And people were reading chunks out of longer novelss (at another group I attended for longer, you could only read 1000 words, but you got a good sense of people's bigger works over time).

[ninah]

have to say really like it particularly 2, 3 and 4
Would like to come back and re-read. The only suggestion I'd have is peel back some adjectives to make it even more powerful eg recalcitrant naughty child - just recalcitrant? that kind of thing
You are very good at evoking a sense of place and I love work that can do that, v difficult thing to achieve I think.

[NotQuiteCockney]

Hmmm, I'm not sure how to classify what I'm writing. Yes, the people are a bit of a mixed bag. Well, actually they're nearly all old ladies, but quite a varied lot. Actually, though I like all of them except one, who has yet (imo) to contribute anything even vaguely worthwhile, either in terms of writing, or critiques. Everyone else is interesting, or at least quiet!

I am thining of taking next term off from the class, though, and seeing if I still write. I've dug out the 'how to write' books I bought years ago, and am thinking about working through one of them.

[kingprawntikka]

I think it is beatifully written , especially the opening paragraph which i love, found the next two paragraphs a bit confusing , because i don't see how they fit together. Sometimes though you need to read more of a book to truly understand the start. Oh and hurry up and finish it so i can go out and buy it!!

[atswimtwolengths]

I've just been looking at old threads and saw this.

I loved your writing, greensleeves. The opening was wonderful.

It's now over two years later - did you finish the novel?

[LaurieFairyCake]

I too have just read this and adore your writing Greeny, have you finished it? I would definitely buy it.