You've been so gracious with your time and effort, I really appreciate it. You've provided me some good food for thought that I will take with me not only with this piece, but also as I go forward with writing. 

I'm glad that multiple looks have changed your mind a bit, that makes me feel good. However, your initial criticisms still ring true and as such, any first time reader may feel put off by the pretentiousness. If I can figure out how to capture a reader's intrigue on the first read through, enough so that they can make more sense of the more experimental structure on subsequent read throughs, then I might be in business. That's gonna be difficult haha but I'm up for the challenge.

I think a good exercise for me will be to write this out in traditional narrative structure, so thank you for that suggestion. I'm glad you noticed a through line in the narrative, and I think this exercise will make that much clearer to me.

Hello, thank you for your comment and I appreciate your input. 

I certainly need to hear a lot of this criticism, as you are right, it comes off as word vomit from a diary of a well off 20 something. The reason I joined the Destructive Readers community is to get broken out of the safeness of masturbatory personal narrative, as it has been quite some time since I actually worked with people on my writing. 

As a result, I've become insular in what I write about--spending lots of alone time because of COVID-19 certainly hasn't helped lol. 

Also appreciate your humor!!! If I ever end up in Seattle I will give spoken word a try :)

Just for more concrete next steps, you mentioned you found the first part interesting, but your interest dropped off when it started shifting scenes. Would you recommend I try to explore that first scene more, and form more of a traditional narrative from there?

OK, I'm approaching this critique with an effort to view the work in the way that I suspect you intended when writing it.  

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The piece is erratic and disjointed in the way that the scenes skip around with no real sense of chronology, but it's clear you meant it to be so.  When I got to the end though, I did not feel as if a story had been told.  The very first section had me interested.  I thought I was going to be reading an essay style piece about family, or maybe a drama, but it turned out to be masturbatory flow-of-consciousness word salad.

&#x200B;

**Indulgent?**

  Yes.  I would also add pretentious, and overdone.  The formatting, spelling and grammar are all flawless, which is a set of skills that I myself do not have, so I give you credit for that.  

On top of that, I am aware that I am not the intended audience for this work.  As a 40 year old guy who is decades past the part of life that you describe, I no longer see it with the kind of fear and wonder that a twe

Thank you for your reply and comments. 

Haha, that first point is a fair point. My whole reason for writing this piece was because I had such a clear memory of cutting this potato just over a month ago and I wanted to remember it vibrantly. I get how it comes off like that. 

Agreed that the story here is buried. Although it may seem disjointed and comes from different perspectives, in my head there is a through-line between all the separate stories. I definitely have to find a better way to make that through-line shine through. 

Your final suggestion is a great idea. I should break down the themes, give them more room to breath, and try to flesh it out more traditionally. Thanks again!

I felt as if each paragraph was a separate story waiting to be told. The deep prose while artistic and shows your grasp of the English language doesn’t add anything to the story to keep it interesting. 

I’d qualify as if someone asked me to write 2000 words about a potato, so I pushed out as many creative sentence combos as I could and then ran it through Grammerly to make sure the rules weren’t broken...In the end, it’s still just 2000 words about a potato. 

It feels like there is a story here but it’s been buried. 

I like the idea of the alternative thought perspective, I just think it’s so overwhelming in a short amount of space that it comes across as random disjointed thoughts. 

The pace of the read is fast and because it’s so fast nothing sinks in. There are no real stand out insights that I gained from what I just read. Nothing that made me say, “wow that’s a cool idea, that’s neat”. It was just a solid sprint to the finish. It felt like the only goal of what I read was to j

>I literally fist pumped in front of the computer

Hahaha that's great! I'm here fist pumping myself for not being clueless for once! 

>thank you so much for the kind words

Of course brother! Looking forward to seeing how this work evolves :)

First off, thank you so much. Your comment was incredibly gratifying and hit on so much of what I was trying to accomplish. That encourages me a ton and makes me want to work on the piece even further. 

Your criticisms are on point, I tend to be overly wordy at times and need to strike a balance between clarity and wordiness. 

Your point about the neutral narrator was interesting to me, and noted. I never really thought about that because I'm writing from my perspective and I'm a man so I must have assumed that came through but clearly it didn't, so I will work that in. 

Re: your comment about being confused by the sentence until you read the following details... 

I enjoy leaving out details to have a reader fill in the blanks. Which can understandably be frustrating at times, but incredibly satisfying when you figure it out. E.g, the paring knife's symbolism. You freakin' nailed it! And I cannot tell you how excited I was. I literally fist pumped in front of the computer haha. But

I'll give you the classic disclaimer: I'm just a dude who wants to be a writer. Take my critique with a grain of salt.

##Plot

Standing alone, each of your different sections seemed to have a small message to give the reader. I'm a bit bemused or maybe disappointed that they're so disjointed, but if that was your intention then I can jive with it. 

Your first section was your strongest. I enjoyed the heartwarming feeling of goals being accomplished and dreams being dreamed. Being able to relate to the kid's anxieties about what's going to happen with their childhood home, about feeling happy for their parents and yet worried about the future, was really nice. And the perfect way to top off that section was the "decade of the same haircut", suggesting this kid is rather resistant to change and it takes this person perhaps more time and processing than the average person. Great character development here.

Small gripe, however - you may have noticed I'm using neutral pronouns for the n

Hi RDR. First submission! Excited to get some feedback on this piece. I feel as if my grasp of language, imagery, and grammar are strong. What I specifically want to know is: how actually interesting is writing like this? Did it feel like there was motion to it, or was it boring and slow? Is it overly self-indulgent? 

Any tips on shaping plot, building characters, writing dialogue, and relating to the reader are greatly appreciated. Thank you and looking forward to getting ripped apart!!!

Submission, [here](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vkp6h-w4-TfiCWoedwTuMU7Iut1YHzcrC7sOE4v7JWg/edit?usp=sharing)

Critiques 

[[645] TV Girlfriend] (https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/l9idh8/645_tv_girlfriend/)

[[1794] The Reincarnation Eaters] (https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/l418sg/1794_the_reincarnation_eaters_part_1_of_3/)

[1697] The Paring Knife