Nov 07, 2023
Tbh, I feel like you've taken a bit of a discordant approach to the message you wanted to convey. I can appreciate that the aleatory and almost non-sequitur string of thoughts is representative of a decaying mental faculty, but I do have to wonder how effective it is at telling a story.
You start with a bit of reflection, then create the tie-in to the original with that little bit of exposition (which is okay, it's not a boogie word), but then it's just... a thousand-word ramble. It ping-pongs between a lot of emotions, grief, yearning, lust (for life), thanatophobia, but I think it struggles to create reader investment. I'm not gonna tell you to make your narration more conventional, far from it even. But in its current form, I don't think that can be achieved.
I feel like a lot of the issues I have stem from repetitions. I think around the halfway point, you started structuring your paragraphs in a way that puts an idea forward in one, then rehashes it in a slightly different phrasing in the next, then rehashes that rehashing and so on. It's only around the time that we get some specifics in (the magnet, for example) that we momentarily depart from that mould, only to fall back into it again. There's also a lot of needless repetition, which stops being stylistic at the same time partial synonyms start becoming total (A gray paper filled with nothingness [...] those three lines don't really strike that symbolist ennui you think they strike).
You've got a good concept and the technique is there; I just think it requires a bit more focus and refinement before the two can join harmoniously.
Best of luck in the competition,
Bubbles.
