Critique on "i should have taken an ambien"

Sara Angela Rodriguez

A415-002/Chambers

Student Critique/ i should have taken an ambien

3/12/2013

I thought that your piece, which was written to be a stream of consciousness journal, was very interesting. I enjoyed reading it, but there are a few things that kind of threw me off. If this is meant to be a stream of consciousness piece then it should follow that design perfectly. I think that by adding spaces in between the paragraphs you are taking away some of the fluidity of the piece. I can see that the spaces were meant to make the piece easier to read and to break apart different trains of thought but in a stream of consciousness piece, which is probably meant only for the writer’s eyes, these spaces would not be needed. Another thing that bothered me a little about your piece is that the narrator actually describes what type of entry they are writing and explains why there is no punctuation. I think that this is not needed because in this type of writing it is assumed that no punctuation, capitalization, etc. will be used. Also, I had an issue with the title. Ambien is a drug that is used to treat insomnia. But, from what I’ve read I can tell that it is not insomnia that this narrator struggles with but anxiety. I think that the title of the piece needs to accurately reflect it. Maybe change the title to I should have taken a(n): xanax, valium, ativan, or klonopin. Any of these anti-anxiety drugs would have worked better. Unless, you really do want the narrator to suffer from insomnia, then you have to make it known in the story. One last thing: the hole in the pants. It appears twice but remember three is the magic number. I want to see the hole presented three times so that way we know that it is a big source of the anxiety.