Page critique 11/19/20

Offer up your page (or query) for Nathan's critique on the blog.
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Nathan Bransford
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Joined: December 4th, 2009, 11:17 pm
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Page critique 11/19/20

Post by Nathan Bransford » November 16th, 2020, 11:10 am

Below is the page up for critique on the blog on Thursday. Feel free to chime in with comments, create your own redline (please note the "font colour" button above the posting box, which looks like a drop of ink), and otherwise offer feedback. When offering your feedback, please please remember to be polite and constructive. In order to leave a comment you will need to register an account in the Forums, which should be self-explanatory.

I'll be back later with my own post on the blog and we'll literally be able to compare notes.

If you'd like to enter a page for a future Page Critique, please do so here.

Title: Unlikely Villain - A Cautionary Tale
Genre: Semi-Autobiographical novel

There are some experiences that, if you walk away with an unchanged perspective on life, maybe you shouldn’t have bothered walking away. They’re those once-in-a-lifetime moments that tower above a lifetime of ordinary moments, dwarfing even the regular monumental landmark occasions where life forks. For this unlikely villain, one stands out above all others, ominous at any distance. It is a tombstone stacked on a mile-high pile of resentments; the whole world can see it casting an impossibly long shadow out of the graveyard and into the land of the living. It belongs to the guy who used to be me. It marks where he died.

I wasn’t expecting much of a Christmas the year that my first life ended. As years go, it had been one for the record books. Not in a good way, mind you - but worthy of note all the same. It seemed as though every page of the calendar had taken a turn at trying to break me.

Back in January the realization that I had made a horrible career move dawned upon me. What had at first appeared to be a gift-wrapped dream job was actually more of a waking nightmare – but a nightmare that I had to suffer through a commute that I wouldn’t wish on almost anyone, in order to get to. The job, and its associated commute, was costing me my physical and mental health.

Then in February, I had to make the decision to stop my father’s cancer treatment and concentrate on his quality of life. We lost Pop the next month. Well, we didn’t actually lose him, he died. And a few months after that, my wife and I suffered our 5th miscarriage. That was just before her birthday. Frankly, we could have done without that.

If you’ve ever struggled with infertility, then you will understand that where ordinary folks would have taken a break, we did not. We had the drugs we needed, carryover from previous attempts. We the support network in place, all the folks at the clinic were familiar with us and what we had been through. I had gotten to superpower level skill at giving my wife injections. I knew where all the good parking spots were at this clinic, like I had so many clinics before. We had a last frozen embryo. We went for broke. You should be aware at the outset that I’m agonizing over this book, and not because of our fertility story’s happy ending.

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