It's always interesting and insightful when a Flamer writes non-fiction. :) Thank you for sharing this. I'm your editor this week so I'll just be looking at ways this could have been improved to make your meanings clearer, etc. All comments are just suggestions. :)
Well, my first comment is about your formatting - although you've clearly used paragraphs, you haven't used extra spaces between them, or indents, to indicate where they start. It would have made this easier to read, I think!
"on top of goddess knows" <-- I'm not sure if you mean "Goddess" or "goodness", but if you mean Goddess, that should probably be capitalised, as God might be?
"we tried to do school work" & "students did their work" & "I attempted to do work" <-- These phrases are very close together in your piece; repeating the word "work" maaes it feel quite stilted. You can vary how you say things to make sentences more interesting and diverse!
"I informed him." <-- It's not entirely clear that this is directed at the brother, so perhaps you could be careful to keep in the reader's mind who is where.
"I got up and looked out the small window in the school, which gave a good look" <-- Like with "work", repeating "look" is stilted - the second one could certainly be "view" instead!
"It was a classic fall New England scene-lovely blue sky" <-- I think that when you use dashes like this, take care to put a space on either side of it so it doesn't disappear amongst the words and make them seem like hyphenated words. Same goes for later on when mum answers the phone.
"He is going to retire shortly." <-- Here you have a tense jump; do you mean he was going to retire at the time of 9/11, or he is due to retire now, in 2011?
"figure out where his cubicle was." <-- As you've just been talking about dad, it's confusing to jump straight across to your uncle with no cue, so be careful! :)
"We had taken a tour of the pentagon" <-- Would need a capital letter.
"The phone ran." <-- "rang"
That's all of my constructive comments - I hope you found them helpful. :) The piece was a calm read, despite the content you're dealing with. You manage to imbue it with a dreamlike simplicity, which is a breath of fresh air when writing about something so tragic. Well done! :)
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Edit!
Date: 2011-05-13 06:21 pm (UTC)Well, my first comment is about your formatting - although you've clearly used paragraphs, you haven't used extra spaces between them, or indents, to indicate where they start. It would have made this easier to read, I think!
"on top of goddess knows"
<-- I'm not sure if you mean "Goddess" or "goodness", but if you mean Goddess, that should probably be capitalised, as God might be?
"we tried to do school work" & "students did their work" & "I attempted to do work"
<-- These phrases are very close together in your piece; repeating the word "work" maaes it feel quite stilted. You can vary how you say things to make sentences more interesting and diverse!
"I informed him."
<-- It's not entirely clear that this is directed at the brother, so perhaps you could be careful to keep in the reader's mind who is where.
"I got up and looked out the small window in the school, which gave a good look"
<-- Like with "work", repeating "look" is stilted - the second one could certainly be "view" instead!
"It was a classic fall New England scene-lovely blue sky"
<-- I think that when you use dashes like this, take care to put a space on either side of it so it doesn't disappear amongst the words and make them seem like hyphenated words. Same goes for later on when mum answers the phone.
"He is going to retire shortly."
<-- Here you have a tense jump; do you mean he was going to retire at the time of 9/11, or he is due to retire now, in 2011?
"figure out where his cubicle was."
<-- As you've just been talking about dad, it's confusing to jump straight across to your uncle with no cue, so be careful! :)
"We had taken a tour of the pentagon"
<-- Would need a capital letter.
"The phone ran."
<-- "rang"
That's all of my constructive comments - I hope you found them helpful. :) The piece was a calm read, despite the content you're dealing with. You manage to imbue it with a dreamlike simplicity, which is a breath of fresh air when writing about something so tragic. Well done! :)