Critical Response 1, Week 12

Response to Kelsey's Williams Improv, Week 12:

Addressing the Williams improv: Though the alliteration in "hesitated" and "hospital" presents itself nicely in the ear, there seems to be a prose feeling to this particular draft that makes the first line seem long and clunky. Consider removing "I must admit"? All in all, there's nothing surprising to the first line. It doesn't push me as a reader in any particular direction and though the looked enjambment is doing something, I don't know if it's enough something to keep pulling me forward. "Profound change" is incredibly abstracted and "awakening" doesn't add much to it. What does something profound or changed look like? "Saw" in line 2 weak in comparison to "gripped" in the fourth line. Ratchet up to gripped like proportions or beyond. In the third line we have that return to the "new world" reference you seem to fixate on in some of your drafts. I totally follow your interest. Leap away with it, I think new world can work here if we're talking about a woman who changes. How is the new world "stiff and defined" when created by a woman "awakened?" Familiar--abstract. Sudden emergence of the word "your" in line 5. Now we have 4 characters, if we include the daughter, and the your kind of just slips in and falls off. Reconsider the POV, perhaps? I like the last line, though I'm not sure how toes can be fallen or who they even belong to.

Write on,
Diamond