The Beast and I

Zeeshan,

Believe it or not, I read your ilog on some other site. I have the ability to set aside my dislike for a person if their craft is good and appreciate their work.

Yours is not good enough. Keep writing. Learn some humility. You`ll need it.

And how much fiction of mine have you read Samina?

Use feet for counting because your calculator got lost while you were trying to sound different from my post while kissing the writer`s arse.

Cant say I`ve read any thing as good as this by you Zeeshan.

You are sheep.

Assume whatever you like, it`s kind of you (and several others with even lazier minds) to think I`m omnipotent though I wonder where I suggested something like that.

I have actual things to say rather than mouth a bored chorus.

You confuse arrogance with threat dinosaura mediocrita. Enjoy yourself, a reign of ignorance can only last so long.

In addition, not only are his criticisms inaccurate, his remedies are clumsy.

Zeeshan Post #4:

Your arrogance amazes me. Do you really believe you know everything there is to know about writing and are in a position to lecture everyone about their inability to write?

Do let me know.

Jawahara -

Ah, the beast within...lurking...!!!

Very nice...hope you can match your future writings to this one...

You think this song is about you,
Don`t you, don`t you...
-- Carly Simon

Zeeshan Post #4:

Your arrogance amazes me. Do you really believe you know everything there is to know about writing and are in a position to lecture everyone about their inability to write?

Do let me know.

This is very, VERY good.

There are several things I love about the way you`ve written this story; the clear and complex characterizations, the dialogue, the intelligence of the narrator, the relationship of the narrator and her husband-and you pull it off! No small feat!

My one suggestion is that you do some pruning of extraneous words, descriptions and explanations. You`ve got some tight prose here-I`d keep that way- that way you can edit your way out of sentimentality- which you have most admirably kept to a bare minimum.

Funny, after the fifth para, I was thinking, I`ve got to show this to my husband as well!

Also, I agree with Shandana-please stick around.

Good work J

This obviously doesn’t bring too many compliments.

If you’re pissed, you can take a reprieve in the lot that’ll succeed this post who’ll have nothing but gushing praise and ejaculations to greet your brains.

I wish my ignorance was limited because I haven’t a clue about your gender.

It does reek of this “sentimental” feminity which is mostly a good thing for a female readership and last I checked my testicles were intact.

You know your way around a trope or two but in some places you just overdo.

That’s what I leave your story with. Overcooked with undernourished metaphors.

It is definitely one of the better writings I’ve seen on chowk (which isn’t saying much honestly but take what you will of my compliments) and I just clicked on your bio and saw you’ve done a lot of stuff here. I’ll check out a couple when I have time to kill online.

Definitely dove here and found some pearls but the narrator is very uninteresting. I wouldn’t suggest that the narrator is a mouthpiece for your own younger (?) self but we could do without hearing about Rushdie and Springer because they just seem like poppy references, a slice of your own life, rather than meaningful allusions.

You’re trying too hard and showing too much of yourself at which point it becomes “look at how clever I am” rather than “look at my story.”

And seduction/seductive is not a very seductive word (more like a lazy one) especially when you use it twice. And it really became the immediate centre of your tale, complete with the memory baggage one has of reading this in bad novels and hearing it in bad erotic dramas.

Obviously I’m the only one who’ll remotely have complaints.

Right now, its five hits and zero replies, but I can close my eyes and imagine the next fifty orgasms about how moved people were by this.

You impress with one line then repulse me with a lazy cop-out where you’re putting a gun to my head to feel something with a line that you wrote too quickly.

All in all, reasonable and the only frontpager I’ve read here that wasn’t a waste of time.

Stay tuned for the story I wrote a year ago but will be up here soon and you get even over there if you want vengeance.

Pretty dramatic waisay it wouldn’t have been inappropriate if the title was ‘Larger Than Life’ .The beast, or the beast of the conscience that is was quiteee larger than life. Quite a saga, layered thickly. The abrupt sanguinity in the end was better then the stretchy start.

san

This reminded me of Paulo Coelho’s Veronika Decides to Die.
What is the point in living a life, battling and losing to inner demons?
Why lead a mundane life for the sake of living?
Suicides are more painful for those left behind, but your treatment of it in first person and tackling inner ‘beasts’ was very close to reality. A treat to read without much verbosity.

aaah jawahara, how i`ve missed you...

as usual, a pleasure to read. your appreciation of words sensuality always leaves me delighted and envious. this time the content was amazing too. rang true :) i think this one i shall save for my own husband to read.

welcome back, don`t go too far.

shandana