Mao almost became ill when he saw Pei. She came into the room with the others, head freshly shaven, orange robes still bearing the original creases. Enthusiastic to be a new jun, to start on her adult life. Enthusiastic like the dozens of jun he’d mentored over the years, the millions of first-year female jun in New Beijing this year alone.

Mao looked away from Pei and gripped the lectern to stop the shaking of his hands. The project. Concentrate on the project.

“This curriculum will teach prepubescent children before the hormonal treatments and will inform their next 120 productive years. You are here because of your attention to detail, the quality of your reasoning, and your ability to persuade." And for the female jun, the project will conveniently end just

[This message has been edited by meg.stout (edited September 28, 2007).]

My take:

quote:

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Mao almost became ill when he saw Pei. She[Who? Mao? Pei?] came into the room with the others, head freshly shaven, orange robes still bearing the original creases. [Enthusiastic to be a new jun, to start on her adult life.<--[This sentence is incomplete. It feels like it stopped before it got where it was going.] Enthusiastic like the dozens of jun he’d mentored over the years, the millions of first-year female jun in New Beijing this year alone.<--[This has the same problem for me.]

Mao looked away from Pei and gripped the lectern to stop the shaking of his hands.[Why are his hands shaking?] The project.[What project?] Concentrate on the project[What else is he concentrating on?].

“This curriculum will teach prepubescent children before the hormonal treatments and will inform their next 120 productive years.[Huh?] You are here because of your attention to detail, the quality of your reasoning, and your ability to persuade." And for the female jun, the project will conveniently end just before they enter maternity seclusion[,] in ten months. She will go away.

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There's a couple of confusing things:

1) Mao obviously knows his problem with Pei. Why don't I? This feels like intentional withholding.

2) The first paragraph is severely muddled. I don't know who she or he is until the second paragraph, so the PoV seems to muddle.

3) In the first sentence of the third paragraph, what does "This curriculum ...will inform their 120 productive years." mean?

4) What genre is this?

5) What time period/era?

Hope this helps

Hey IB - thanks for the crit!

Here are the first thirteen after a tad of revision - sorry about the partial sentences. It's currently a part of my style, and I haven't decided I hate it enough to eradicate it. Oh, and the names have changed.

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Yang almost became ill when he saw the young woman, the resemblance to his dead wife was so strong. She came into the room with the others, head freshly shaven, orange robes still bearing the original creases. Meilin her nametag said. Enthusiastic to be a new jun, to start on her adult life. Enthusiastic like the dozens of jun he’d mentored over the years, the millions of first-year female jun in New Beijing in the year 5198.

Yang looked away from Meilin and gripped the lectern to stop the shaking of his hands. The project. Concentrate on the project.

“This new curriculum will teach prepubescent children in the new century for many decades to come. One hundred million

My husband critiqued it for me. I quickly addressed his concerns, then we mailed it just 4 minutes before the post office closed.

It was fun that my husband said it was the piece he has most enjoyed of the things I have written.

If anyone wants to read it even though it got mailed, let me know. Assuming it doesn't place in this quarter's contest, I'm open to revising it. I may expand this into a novel - certaniyl I'd be interested in doing a novel in this universe.