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i'm honest about this kind of stuff, so i hope you're ok with that.

you're right, it is definitely emo (as i understand what that means), which means that i wouldn't really be part of the target audience for it. but, putting aside that consideration, i thought it had lots of promise. lots of interesting writing around images, and human touch. there are some nice intellectual flourishes, writing and structure. but it leans heavily towards syrupy, and it does need much more work.

i hope that's helpful, i'll talk to you more about this when we catch up.

So over the past while I've been considering actually trying to do something (ie publish, either shopping it around and entering contests, or self-publish and shill online/in indie bookstores/to friends) with some of the stuff I've written over the past 2 years, and decided to forward most of it to a friend of mine whose opinion I trust and respect. That's the first thing he's said to me about it.

He's got a good point, and I agree that some of them probably could use work, but I'm somewhat leery of losing the emotional honesty that a lot of the pieces exhibit. When I was younger and wrote poetry in class, the most frequent feedback I received was that it was a bit too contrived, a bit too intellectualized; it just didn't quite bring the reader along. I don't know if the stuff I've been writing over the past few years has done that, but it's certainly felt far more spontaneous and free. Some of it is angry, some of it is happy, most of it seems to be sad, but it is what it is; I'm glad I've never felt the need to edit them because they displayed a side of me I wasn't comfortable with expressing (at least, expressing in writing).

I'm not too sure where to go with it now. I have a few other people I've been considering sending them to, but I'm a little worried that they (knowing me as they do) might read too much into the content, and I'd really rather not deal with that. All stories are somewhat autobiographical, but sometimes a story is just a story.