Flash Fiction / LAMENT

well, “they” would be any number of people: parental units, authority figures in general, teachers, role models, etc. but with a six word limit, i just have to trust the reader to fill in the blanks. if i’d been allotted one additonal word(& wouldn’t seven words have been a better & more icon limit?), i would have specified something like “correct” or “relevant” instructions; because, while all of the aforementioned did in fact issue scards of instructions, they weren’t necesarilly the ones one needs or should follow.
i agree that one of life’s greatest goals & pleasures is trying to figure out the right instructions, much as we struggle to divine meaning from the instruction page that comes with a foreign-made product that requires assembly.  

okay, i admit it seems like i’m, blaming someone else. the challenge was to write a 6-words-or-less thing; if i’d had more words i would have expanded it to something along the lines of “i was given a lot of instructions, but unfortunately they turned out to be not the instructrions i really needed; those i had to figure out by myself via a long years of trial & error.” is that better?

okay, i agree that,as written,it seems like i’m blaming some unspecified “someone else”. but the challenge was to write a 6-words-or-less thing. if i had more words to work with, it would have read something more along the lines of: “they gave me a lot of instructions, but unfortunately the turned out to not be the instructions i reall y needed; those i had to figure out myself after long years of trial & error.”

I feel your pain. :) And I know you’re also a fine writer. Actually, my response to your six-worder was not really negative. The statement does place the blame on others, which is perfectly fine. Sometimes they are to blame.

“neglected” is actually closer to what i was getting at, although i don’t really like how the word sounds in the sentence…what’s another punchier word that conveys the same meaning? hmmm…”failed”? (but wait—when i looked up “neglect” in my thesuarus, “forget” was one of the synonyms…)
thanks for your input.

I like how it sounds against ‘instructions’ to me it balances the sentence.

thanks. kind of hard to understand how anyone feels the need for a colon or semicolon in a six-word piece.

hey, here i took your advice(from your review of version 1) & changed that word, & you’re still criticizing!   guess there’s just no pleasing some people…

I noticed that.  

The more I think about the whole 6 word thing the more impossible they get.

I don’t know if you’ve looked at the ones that were doing well in the contest but they tend to not be such straight-forward sentences.  

This sentence is better than the original but could still use some tweaking.