Mimesis Writing Exercise Relfection

Copied text: “I had all the characteristics of a human being—flesh, blood, skin, hair—but my depersonalization was so intense, had gone so deep, that my normal ability to feel compassion had been eradicated, the victim of a slow, purposeful erasure. I was simply imitating reality, a rough resemblance of a human being, with only a dim corner of my mind functioning”- American Psycho

It all happened in a flash. One second I was crossing the road with my mother and the next second a car has rammed through my foot and I’m screaming in agony. Despite the reality of the situation, my brain still tried to delude itself into believing something else- “God, is this real? This is just a dream right? Why did this happen to me?”. No matter how many ways I tried to rationalize my situation, the fact still remained that I screwed up. As I was sorting through my thoughts, my physical body was screaming and shrieking. The only things I could feel were emotions of pain and terror- pain, fear, anger, and sorrow. Luckily, these emotions would be slightly alleviated when a few kind samaritans came to my aid. They brought a chair for me to sit down in and called the ambulance. While it only took about 3 minutes for the ambulance to arrive and pick me up, it felt as if 3 hours had occurred. During this time I thought about a lot of things- mostly about how stupid I was for being in this situation.

Reflection: After copying some text from the book, “American Psycho”, I feel that the quality of my writing changed drastically. Instead of focusing on getting my memories down on paper, I was focused on describing my experience as much as possible. I also used more commas and dashes than I usually do when writing. As for the rhythm of my writing, I feel that it became more coherent because my description of one event flowed into the description of the next event.