workshop--cj

"Type One" by C.J. Krakeel

This is a day in the life of a lot of kids, the day that they are diagnosed with a disease. I think that the first crot was really good (you're growing a lot as a writer, C.J.), but I thought that you could also start the piece with the sentence: "I tightly held the skin and muscle between my thumb and index finger on my left hand, with the thumb and index finger of my right." That way, you don't have to say things that make you sound unsure as a narrator like "I bet I thought about many things as I lay there on that bed in the clinic." I absolutely love the paragraph starting with "'[O]ld trick used to relieve headache pain,' said the pudgy nurse, that I now knew by name." I love that her name, "Julie Swab," is a sentence all by itself, and you follow it with beautiful detail about her looking like a Q-tips (or bundle of Q-tips). Great! I also like this: "The second hand on the blue and red clock with the Tylenol background, ticked, on and on." You give us enough detail to let us know that you have been in the clinic a lot, without coming and saying that explicitly.
The next crot had some great moments, too, like "I counted the tiles on the floor until we reached the big blue doors that lead out of White Water Middle School." In fact, I thought this entire crot was tight and pretty well-written. I love the lines "His breaths are loud and long" and "'Go ahead and eat it,' Dad says it won't make much difference." I think this essay is pretty complete as it stands (with a little revision, looking at sentences, etc). But if you wanted to make it a longer piece, maybe you could add in crots about how much you love candy, the first time you felt sick, the tests they had to run to determine what was wrong. But like I said, this was good the way it is; not too much, not too little. I can see big improvements from last semester. Good job, C.J.! I also think that maybe you could change the title to something else; something about how much this day impacted you as a kid, or something. I can't really think of a good one right now, but I'll try to give you a good suggestion on Thursday.