deleted at author's request, Short story Options

[Guest_Andrew_*]

deleted at author's request

[Guest_Nina_*]

Hi Andrew

and a very warm welcome to MM.  If you have any questions please feel free to send me a PM (private message) there is a button marked send msg at the bottom of this post that you can press.

Wow, what a first poem.  You don't need to feel tentative about posting it.  It was a gripping, fascinating read.  I have never heard of a scanner used in treating depression before.  What exactly does it do?  How does it help in the treatment?  

The whole story was very realistic and felt as if it were something you have actually experienced.  If so I hope you are not feeling too depressed at the moment and if it is not something you've been through then, what an imagination you have.

I particularly like the way you weave in details of the narrator's family history in an understated way, giving the reader an understanding of the possible root causes of the man's mental state.  The image of the drunken father were very powerful.

My fingers were twitching reading the man's yearning to press the black button and part of me wanted him to and part of me didn't.

A fascinating insight, thanks for the read

Nina

[Guest_Andrew_*]

Hi Nina,

Wow - thanks!  I'm so pleased you enjoyed it.  Don't panic though, it's not really personal experience... I suppose I get depressed sometimes, but nothing too serious.  In fact, I have been in an mri scanner before but only as a guinea pig in academic research experiments.  To my knowledge, they're not used in the treatment of depression, though they do mark up the areas of the brain that are active when people think and react to stimuli - so it's not an entirely crazy idea.

All the best,
Andrew.

[Guest_Nina_*]

Hi Andrew

that's good  :grinning:

Well done with the story, it was convincing.

Nina

[Guest_Andrew_*]

Cheers Nina,  :)
Best wishes,
Andrew.

[Cleo_Serapis]

Hello Andrew.

WELCOME TO THE MOSAIC!

I'll be back soon as I've got a couple of other tiles to catch up with as well in this forum - for now a quick HELLO!  

If you have any questions about MM, feel free to ask.

Cheers!
~Cleo  :pharoah:

[Guest_Toumai_*]

Hi, Andrew

Welcome to MM, hope you'll find it a friendly and useful site. As Nina and Lori (Cleo) say, do feel free to ask about anything.

This is a very vivid and polished story; despite the grim subject matter you managed to enthrall me. I'm very relieved to hear it is not entirely autobiographical. Depression is something that most of us deal with at some level at some time in our lives, if not first hand then for friends or family.

The details of the scan procedure are so real that it adds wonderful credibility to the tale; I chuckled at the belt removal. You build up the confinement and claustrophobia very well without overdoing it; perhaps the narator is too lethargic and depressed to really care.

I have heard that scans are not used much in diagnostics and so on for depression etc yet, but are certainly being used in mood research to pinpoint the areas of the brain involved in different types of affective disorders, so the idea here is excellent.

I loved the questions from the computer screen, and even more that we never hear his answers, just his thoughts that are sparked by them.

I couldn't explain it, but as my forefingers rested over the response buttons, my thumb drifted beneath them, scanning the plastic mounting of the black button that I was not, under any circumstances, to touch.  As the questioning continued, finally I ran it across its smooth, varnished surface.  My desire to press this button was becoming relentless, almost painful.

In my own mind I was wondering if the questions about the black button were being supplied by the computer or by his own mind? That black button takes on immense significance; the ray of hope that he opts for a return to the world is excellent. Very powerful indeed.

My only suggestion is that perhaps he wouldn't care about or remember the names of the medical staff - so you could simply refer to 'the doctor' and 'the technician' - impersonnal ?

Wonderful story; looking forward to more.

Fran

[Guest_Jox_*]

Hi Andrew.

From me, too a formal big welcome to MM (we’ve exchanged PMs).

Great to see you posting here. I hope you enjoy the site and benefit from it.

You live just down the A34 road from me, by the way. (About fifty miles).

I won’t be too heavy on this crit (don’t want to scare you off) but if you want stronger crits please let us know.

Cheers, James.

-------------------------------------------------------
>Title: Pushing the Right Buttons
>Word Count: 1300 words
>My first, hesitant post...

(Thanks for giving word count - helps).


"And if I press this button?"

"Oh no, you don't press that button. You just leave that button alone." Dr Gough smiled unconvincingly and continued to drum her forefingers on her lap. After a pregnant pause, she added, "If that's everything, shall we get you in, then?"

(Avoid cliches - “pregnant pause” is a very well-known one).

"This is Mr Linklaus.

(Where did you find his name? Unusual - good)

Interesting, I thought: a feeling. Perhaps I was getting better already.

(Try putting thoughts into italics or single quotes. Actually, publishers like single quotes for speech. NB: I think that in the USA the converse is the case).

(“flickering computer screen” puts this in the recent past - do you want that? - Modern flat screens don’t flicker).

"We'll see you on the other side, Mr Peters," the doctor promised, as they pushed me into the darkness.

(ROFL! Makes it sound like time / travel or a crematorium - good note of worry. Well done).

#

(I didn’t realise the magnets made noises - thanks).

(“Mostly, these sounds were sudden and short-lived, though at other times they came in prolonged periods of recurring and strangely tuneful motifs.” - excellent writing).

(“Held tightly as I was in the close grip of the machine..” - less good writing - awkward inverse).

(“these unfamiliar, foreign stimuli evolved quickly into a natural part of my experience, as if they occurred, quite organically, through some internal process of my own.” - back to excellent writing).

If I looked above the tips of my prism glasses, I could see the ceiling only a few centimetres from my head. As I lay supine, my elbows pressed themselves against the walls. "You may experience a degree of claustrophobia," they had warned me during the induction. What though, I wondered silently, could be more claustrophobic than one's own mind?

(Prism glasses?)

(Excellent point in last sentence - but needs developing).

(Great stuff!)

#

(If anyone tells me to do choosing quickly without thought my mind simply goes into a loop and I cannot function - I would have pressed nothing).

You enjoy the challenges posed by unfamiliar situations.

(Yes - the black button sounds part of the challenge. I would have pressed it first!)

(See I’m reading and reacting to your writing, rather than critting - means you are carrying me along with good writing).

Truth be told, I was sceptical about the merits of my treatment. I knew that this emptiness was not really related to any person, or any event, in particular. Rather, this nebulous sadness, this sense of dislocation, seemed to me to be a normal aspect of my character. It was natural, immutable. Doubtless, they could fill me with drugs, with panic inhibitors and neural receptors, with poisons that would re-route the synapses and the flow of chemicals around the channels of my body. And probably, it would be better for my mother, mourning at this very moment in the hospital reception for some vision of a son that had never really existed. Whenever I now returned to my childhood home, I would catch her gazing pensively in my direction, wordlessly imploring me to reassure her that her child was not irredeemably impaired. Or at least, that she shared no part in the blame - she had convinced herself that the divorce was at fault. Or the boarding school that I had been sent to. Or the colour of the wallpaper in my bedroom.

(Excellent, Andrew).

Mostly, my mind was an abyss. I had trained myself this way and the prospect of change was frightening. If they filled me with the chemicals that they wanted to, it seemed to me that they may as well kill me. Because I would no longer be me, but someone else.

(I’ve just decided not to press the black button. Too late?)
#

(Excellent, understated and enthralling, Andrew. thanks for the read. To be honest there are very few suggestions I can make here...

----------------------

I took it that the child had murdered his drunken Father and, therefore was being assessed. Was that your intention or just my interpretation, please?

Well paced, good central character, excellent suspense, fooled me - I thought the button would be pressed. etc etc.

Sorry old chap, I simply can't give you a bigger crit as I offered to before I read this - how can I? Save to say, don’t change much and send it to a magazine for a competition / publishing. Too good not to.

PS Just read your other critics and I agree with Fran about making the personnel nameless - just distracts - but I have a feeling you used the names on purpose?

James.

[Guest_Nina_*]

Hi Andrew

It is interesting how different readers interpret things differently.  

I didn't get any sense of the narrator having murdered his drunken father, rather that his father had banged his head against the kitchen table because he was too drunk to see what he was doing and simply rendered himself unconcious.  

The assumed that the reason that he was so depressed was probably as a result of his life experiences to-date: the fact that his father was an alcoholic, being sent away to boarding school, his parents divorce not being able to cope with the stresses of university, feeling he didn't belong there and the loneliness of living alone in a bedsit and being unable to take proper care of himself.

Nina

[Guest_Toumai_*]

Hi, all

I took the description of the father's death to be deliberately ambiguous (but I forgot to say that was one of the things I found impressive - ooops). So does that mean I'm sitting on that fence again?

Fran

[Guest_Jox_*]

Hi Andrew, Nina, Fran.

>F>I took the description of the father's death to be deliberately ambiguous (but I forgot to say that was one of the things I found impressive - ooops).

I agree entirely. I think it was written that way, too. But, seeing as I had to interpret it I plumped for murder / manslaughter.

>F>So does that mean I'm sitting on that fence again?

err, yes :)

J.

[Arnfinn]

I thought this was extreamly well written for one of tender posts.


Welcome to MM, Andrew.

The black button. The finality of black. Expiration or lack of it. The test, the pass. All the academics hoping for failure. That little trace of sanity, that just brings a bit of rationalism into the exercise.


A good well expressed story.


John  :saruman:

[Guest_Andrew_*]

Hello everyone,

Wow.  I've been away for a few days and I'm stunned to get back to so many responses here.  Thank you all.  

As a general comment, I'm looking for heavy, pedantic, brutal reviews.  I don't have much by way of a formal background in writing, so all advice and criticism is going to be really important to me.  And of course, I don't actually *know* any of you either, so it hardly matters how much I hate your guts.... Ahem.

In a way, I've cheated a bit by posting this story first.  I've had it kicking around for a while now and so it's been revised a good few times and is more polished than a lot of my stuff.  Jox, you've made some fantastically useful comments - things that I'd never have spotted after so many reads of my own, but that are so obvious when you point them out.  I owe you one.
Cheers also Fran... I see your point regarding the naming thing, and I think I probably agree.  I'll certainly give it some thought.  (Jox, Linklaus is just the surname of a singer in a band I was listening to at the time - it sounded good, but I can't claim there's much more to it than that...)
And, finally, yes, the references to the character's history were indeed deliberately ambiguous... I'm pleased this came across.

I'd really like to offer my own thoughts on your work - but looking down the list I'm not really sure which bits of work are most appropriate, or of current interest?  Maybe it's easiest to PM me and I'll take a look at whatever you suggest?

All the best,
Andrew.

[Guest_Toumai_*]

Hi, Andrew

Just to be really unhelpful, I've actually only written 5 short stories over as the last 2 years, 2 of which are maybe passably ok ...  

I'm much more interested in novel-length stuff, but I don't dare put that on the web, cos of the problems with publishers getting shirty about prior publication. (For me poetry was a bit of an accident, but it's so addictive! Beware: one day you may wake up with a dreadful urge to spout; scary though the prospect may be, it cannot be denied.)

The good thing about the web is making wonderful contacts whom one can then abuse by sending them chapters for crit (thanks, James, Perry). The WD groups are a much better bet for good crits than the open forum, I agree.

What kind of market are you sending your stories to? Have you had much luck? I was lucky with a short story for a live reading sponsored by the W Midlands Arts Council ('Short Cuts' at the B'ham mac). Worth checking that kind of thing out on the web. They also do a local magazine, 'raw edge' in our area.

I started moderating this forum in the hope that I might feel like writing more short stories, but luckily I really enjoy reading and critting - and the flash sessions are good excercise.
http://forums.mosaicmusings.net/cgi-bin....SF;f=18

By the way, there will be a get together of some of the MM Brit members in September, but it may be a way to travel for you: Winchester.
http://forums.mosaicmusings.net/cgi-bin....ry48371

Good luck with it all!

Fran

[Guest_Nina_*]

Hi Andrew

I too have only written a few short stories, posted in Stonehenge and a couple of those were Challenges initially posted in Acropilis.  I am the opposite to Fran and started with writing poetry and have only written prose since February.  The fortnightly Flashes (Fran posted the link) have been a wonderful way of getting me writing prose and they are great fun to participate in.

As for critting, feel free to select whatever you want, all comments are very welcome, no matter when the work was posted.  

It would be lovely if you could come along to our MM Pub Meet in Winchester on 23 September, venue to be decided.

Nina

[Guest_Andrew_*]

Hi again.

Fran: if by 'any luck' you mean 'getting published', then, ar, no, not yet... A couple of personal rejections, which apparently is a good thing?!  I've only been sending for around a month though, so I've not lost hope entirely.
I've started a couple of novels in the past, but with no real vision of where they were going, or writing technique, or... I think, for the short term, short stories suit me quite well, if only because I have such a short attention span.

Nina: I'll pop by one your pieces asap.  

Best wishes,
Andrew.

[Guest_Jox_*]

Hi Andrew,

Personal rejections are as gold dust - well done!

I have enough stereotype rejections to wallpaper the Bodlian several times over.

Just keep going.

James.

[Cleo_Serapis]

Hi Andrew!  

I finally had a chance to read your post yesterday and enjoyed it very much!  

You've already received some great tips (seeing as this is so polished already, it's hard to nit).   One item that I do is to italize thoughts of the character (it may very well be a U.S. thing, I'm not sure as I don't use quotes on thoughts.

I was hoping he WOULD press that black button so we could learn what happened! Perhaps we can just pnder ourselves, would he have (a) been turned into a x, (b) been zapped into nothingness, © been tickled by a hord of x - well you get the idea...      

I have been in an MRI recently with a back injury and I confess, it is not a pleasant experience. Yes, they gave me some headphones and asked me what music I liked, but that constant tick tick tick bang bang bang was too loud! LOL! All I could think of was 'when can I get the hell out of this thing?'


Anyway - here are just a few ideas to ponder...
Cheers!
~Cleo  

[delete] {add}

"Hi."  As the word caught in the roof of my mouth, it occurred to me that I was nervous.  Interesting, I thought: a feeling.  Perhaps I was getting better already.
Interesting. A feeling. I thought.  Perhaps I was getting better already.

The doctor placed my case notes by the keyboard and began to whisper into the man's ear.  I took this opportunity to study my environment.  The white-washed walls, the small desk and the flickering computer screen, all [were]dominated by the hulking presence of the scanning machine itself.  

If I looked above the tips of my prism glasses, I could see the ceiling only a few centimetres from my head.  As I lay supine, my elbows pressed themselves against the walls.  You may experience a degree of claustrophobia, they had warned me during the induction.  What though, I wondered silently, could be more claustrophobic than one's own mind?

Love the ending!!!!!  :pharoah2

[Guest_ZaoShang_*]

This story must be published by now, and I really hope it is, or at least accepted. It's very well written; you're obviously an experienced writer. The amounts of description, dialogue, and reflection are very well balanced. Your style is well polished and pleasant.

a dull, grey form always sitting right in front of me

-an excellent metaphor to depict depression

that I was not, under any circumstances, to touch

-for some reason, I'd prefer you didn't remind me that; I already knew it.

what could be more claustrophobic than one's own mind?

-I was intrigued to read that because I myself feel comfortable enough with my own mind. But now that I've read the whole story, I feel that it describes perfectly the theme.

I was hooked in every moment of the reading. You managed very well the conflict. I enjoyed the way the italicised sentences emphasised the tension. It was some sort of mystical experience, like talking with an oracle or a god.

In my reading, the character's anxiety ('the doctor promised) became legitimate with the question 'If you're finished'. As if he had the choice to go on with the 'game' indefinitely...

I didn't think right away that he had murdered his father. Yet, from the computer's questions, I understood that he was being tested for some anti-social behaviour. So Jox's hypothesis makes sense to me.

Excellent story. Well done!

[Guest_Andrew_*]

Hi, ZaoShang,
Yes.  You got me.  I missed this post as well...
It was a great surprise to wake up this morning and to discover your kind words.  In fact, I've only been writing short stories for around a year, so I'm particularly pleased that this lack of experience didn't come across here.  In many ways, I think this is my best piece so far, but no, it's not yet accepted.  Fingers crossed, eh?
Many thanks again,
Andrew.