Chapter I: Abstract reality Jade Delano My mind is slipping from my head and I feel that I am losing touch with what is real. I look outside the window of this prison cell and see birds flying in the distance. I close my eyes and picture myself as one of those birds gliding across the sky. Those lucky blackbirds which are freely escaping the cold north and heading towards the warmth which only the south could provide at this time of year, in December. Those birds move in continuous flight, while my life is at a constant standstill. The events that led me to this dreary dull existence is quite a tale. The sole reason for me to continue living is so I may document the details of the incidents which would determine my fate of imprisonment for life. My name is Jade Delano. I am an only child to Mary and Stephen Delano, hard working middle class run of the mill citizens. I experienced a pretty average childhood, yet from an early age it had become apparent to those close to me I showed symptoms suggesting insanity. Some of these symptoms were demonstrated in behavior such as carrying on audible conversations with myself in public, throwing fits fueled by anger, a decline in social activity with peers and violent tendencies towards myself and others. For the most part I seemed to be a normal boy, but at times I would experience a fall into my inner-self. It is from this that I would unintentionally enter episodes of insanity that could last several minutes, or several days. The only way to forcefully end the bouts of insanity was for me to drift off from physical consciousness which was rather difficult as I was not physically in control. I was commonly put in situations where I could mentally sit inside myself and watch as well as listen to what I would do. I would not, however, have possession of my other senses such as smell, feeling or taste. It seemed that when I would lose these three senses, in return I would gain increased intuition. This heightened awareness of the occurrences and functioning of the universe is really quite difficult for me to put into words. Even if I were to learn every adjective in the English language I would still feel verbally unequipped to describe such a feeling. Looking back on the times I would have this sense of inner peace with the universe it was quite ironic how I would seemingly express the opposite physically. Later on I realized when I entered this state of mind I could choose to give up my sense of sight and sound as well and by doing so my intuition would grow even sharper. Instead of seeing and hearing what was around me physically I would experience sights and sounds which appeared to unlock many mysteries of the universe to me. As I came of age, I was soon brought to the realization that chaos and violence centered me mentally. I could not understand why this was, but in ignorance I refused to question it. The hunger for knowledge every child naturally contains was quickly spoiled by the American public education system. Learning was made to seem like a chore, rather than a privilege. The reasons for my erratic behavior on the inside and out was just one of the things I blatantly ran from, rather than what perhaps I should have been doing. That is simply put to have engaged myself mentally to seek out why I was the way I was. If only I had gone down life’s path in search of knowledge, rather than constantly ignoring the possibility of reason things may have turned out differently for me. From an early age I recall questioning myself why my peers treated me differently. Whether I was in grade school, middle school, high school or even college I didn’t seem to click with any of my peers. I hadn’t become aware of this until I my 8th birthday. With the assistance of my mother I had made invitations and handed one out to everyone in my class and threw a birthday party at my house. No one showed up. It was on this day I had my first conversation with God. I asked him why he had created me differently than the boys and girls in my class. I received no response, initially that is. Hours later as I laid in my bed with the blanket covering my frail 8 year old body, eyes closed and in a fetal position I heard a voice that was not from this world. “Jade,” said a whisper that seemed to boom as loud as a firecracker inside my head. “You are the way you are for a reason.” “Reason?” I uttered, while the echo of the booming whispered continued to leave a wavering presence inside my head. I cowered at the word into a deep sleep. Slumber took me in and wiped out all desire for knowledge, reason and rationality. I was in a sleep that only occurs to those unlucky enough to have coherence flipped inside out. When I woke up the first thing that came to mind was a very brief thought of truth, the last of which I would experience for quite some time. For one short moment I knew what I truly was. I was from birth, but simply an abstract reflection of nonexistence.
It's really quite difficult to know what to make of this. I suppose there could be promise in the whole 'psychotic episodes' thing, because such things can be quite interesting at times, but as it is, there's not much of a story here. It reads like some really tame, really lonely kid going on and on about his problems and who he blames for them (namely, anyone but himself-- which can't be helping his loneliness) not like a writer trying to tell a story. Is that what you're going for? With something like this, right away the reader has to question your motive for writing it... is it to create an engaging work of art, or to get sympathy for your perceived plight, or just to get a handle on what's been bothering you, personally? Only one of these options makes for good writing that other people could enjoy, the others, unless you're a celebrity or something, do not. Also, I can't say I like your title. 'Unspoken Insanity'??? Does someone usually 'speak' their insanity? And for that matter, you should really try to get away from useless, outdated blanket terms like 'insanity'... most people don't use that term to describe psychological problems anymore (it's actually really rude)... they do, however, use it to describe certain extreme situations, often involving unthinkable violence or immorality. And to be perfectly honest, none of the sensations you describe are all that suggestive of anything extreme... in fact, they seem like mild and natural feelings that a lot of teenage youths experience to some degree. Another big problem is that there's also a lot of telling and not so much showing going on here. You go on and on about how this guy is so fucked up (though his childhood is 'normal'-- so why are you mentioning it if it has no bearing on your main subject?)... and then describe some pretty tame things like zoning out (I used to do that, so did lots of other kids)... and then you talk about violence without going into any details... why should anyone believe you if you don't give us an example? If you had written about him setting another guy's testicles on fire then I might have said 'whoa, that's fucked up', but just telling me that he's violent, I think 'uh huh...'. Also, some of your claims seem a bit ridiculous. If you don't know every adjective in the English language already then how do you know that all these words you don't know wouldn't be able to describe your condition? And then, you actually go ahead and DESCRIBE your condition, thereby disproving your claim. If you want to say that something can't be described, then don't try to describe it... it reminds me of one of those cheesy science fiction/horror stories where the author writes 'I would not DARE to describe the terrors I saw in that cold black abyss... for they are too terrible to describe, and attempting to do so would only drive my readers to madness!', but even that's better, because at least the obvious device is somewhat excused... in your case, you haven't even really thought up an excuse. Anyway, your spelling and grammar are good... but if you want to write something that people will want to read, my advice is to stop indulging your 'inner narratives' and monologues about nothing, stop holding back and 'saving your climax' and just let loose all your good ideas and scenes right from the start... otherwise, people will think you don't have any.
Heywood's comments are pretty well to the point. I would make some suggestions for an improved re-write as follows, but keep in mind that you have some valuable ideas here. So look at this as constructive, not destructive criticism. You have excessive paragraph length. Many readers will just turn off when they see an unbroken fifty line paragraph. Look up the content and split it up when your major thought changes. You have written a monologue. Your thoughts concern yourself only for the most part. There is no dialog and no development of other people's thoughts and feelings. You do not tell the reader why the narrator (yourself?) is doing a life sentence. An interested reader will want to know this.
sorry please change the bit about the blackbird to another type of bird as the blackbird does not migrate to the south it stays put along with most garden birds try something like a swallow or swift, but other wise nice
