Well, I have gone through this all the way, finally. First, I will say that it was a rather cute piece of work. You know some of my early nits but I will give you a few more without going over the previous ones in too much detail.



Quote Originally Posted by underwhere View Post
Jessica opened the door to her son's room. Her eyes scanned from floor to ceiling, of which she couldn't actually see the floor since it was covered from end to end with papers, dirty clothes, and various knickknacks. She was seething. She wasn't sure how much more teenage angst she could take from Mark. It was bad enough that he didn't seem to listen to anything she said. Just that morning, for the umpteenth time, she had reminded him of the necessity of keeping his room clean. He promised her that he would take care of it before going out with his friends that night, and like all of the previous occasions when he made such promises, this one had also been broken.

Well, if Mark can't do it himself, I'm going to have to do it for him. She began by picking up the dirty clothes from the floor and putting them in the hamper. Why did I bother to get him a hamper if he never uses it?
I am not partial to the italics used for her thoughts. You should use quotations and offer a "she thought" or something similar. While it was clear that it was her thoughts - so there wasn't confusion - I don't think it is particularly good form to use italics.

When she finished that task, which she noticed took her less than one minute, she took her second look around the room, this one with a more critical eye now that it didn't seem quite so cluttered. Sure, it was still a mess, but it didn't look quite so bad now.
Colloquial. Try another word like "certainly" or even eliminate the word and start with "It".

[QUOTE]Her eyes spotted a pad of paper on Mark's bed. It was open to a page about half way through the pad. Even though she knew she shouldn't read it, curiosity got the better of her. Sitting down on his bed, she began reading what was clearly her son's handwriting in blue ink pen. She flipped back a few pages to the beginning of the most recent entry.
Eliminate "even". It is completely unnecessary. Remember, this is the narrative voice.

Dear Diary,
I've been writing to you for a few months now, and I still feel silly every time I do. After all, boys don't write in diaries. Thats what girls do.

It's not like anybody is ever going to read this anyway. My therapist told me it would be a good way for me to get my thoughts and emotions out in a more constructive way, but I really don't think it's helping me. Dad hasn't come back, after all. I know he treated Mom like shit and all, and sometimes he hit me pretty bad too, but I still miss him.

Jessica closed her eyes for a minute deep in thought. She had been so focussed on merely surviving that horrific situation with her ex-husband David that she had completely failed to notice that Mark needed help too. When did he start going to therapy? What was he really up to these days? Did he really still miss David?
If I am not mistaken (technical aspects not being my forte) you are missing a few commas.

Dad probably wouldn't be the best person for me to get advice from on dating and girls, but I still feel like I need some help there. Frankly, I'm afraid to even bring this up with my therapist.
This seems too mature for most children. Another aspect that has me sort of put off is that, I think, therapy would need parental permission.

Yesterday, while I was sitting on a bench at the park, this girl named Susan came up to me. I think she is about fourteen years old. She was wearing a pink dress which made her look really beautiful. I'd seen her around school before, but, well, I'm one of those "nice" guys, and nobody ever seems to like "nice" guys these days, especially not girls, but she started talking to me about her mother anyway. I guess we have a lot in common, maybe more than either one of us would like to admit.

What on earth was Mark writing about? What did they have in common? Jessica had far more questions than answers so far.
A "she wondered" and quotes would be groovy in these areas. You wouldn't happen to be like me and have difficulty finding that key would you? I avoided dialog for a long time because it took forever to find the damned quotation key.

Diary, it didn't take long for us to share our situations with each other. I've told you many times about how Dad hit me. Sometimes, I probably deserved it, but sometimes, he was just so angry and drunk that I didn't think I could do anything to stop him, so I let him hit me because I wasn't able to think quick enough to get out of the way. Every time he hit me, whether it was a slap on my face or a spanking on my bare ass, I hated him for it, but at least when I knew I had deserved it, I could forgive him for it. It was the times when he would just beat me for no good reason, and for which I received the most severe bruises, that I hated him, and that seemed to be more often than not.
Let's make that two sentences. The other one, too.

Jessica couldn't help but feel a pang of guilt. Why couldn't I see that happening? Why didn't I do more to try to protect Mark?

Jessica was scared of David too, and for much the same reasons. That's what caused her to eventually call the cops on him and got him carted off to prison on domestic assault charges. She suddenly wished she had done so a lot sooner.
"Carted" is, again, a colloquial term. You are the narrator, so cut it out. Also, you don't get carted off to prison for charges. You get taken to prison for being found guilty. Also, domestic abuse would be a better term and he would have been in a country jail for about 6 months, generally speaking, if that. Prison doesn't hold anyone who is in for less than one year.

Well, I told Susan about this and she started telling me about her mother. Diary, all I can say is that I wish my father had half the heart Susan's mother had. Susan told me that she had received a blistering spanking earlier in the week that she thought was really unfair, but when she told me she received the spanking for cheating on a test, I had little sympathy for her. I still wanted to be friends with her, but I wanted her to know that honesty always came before friendship. She was upset, but I think she understood.
That's a bit too adult for this to come off real. Remember, if you are writing for a child you need to use every child and not someone who speaks like an adult. I read what you said before, but you were the exception, not the norm.

Jessica was proud of Mark for being such a good teacher, but what she read next really startled her.
That's not really being a teacher so much as it is being someone with good moral fiber. I suggest you use another term.

I told her that for lying, I thought she deserved a second punishment from me, a bare bottom spanking. Diary, when I told her this, I will admit that I suddenly got quite a hard-on myself. I don't know if she noticed.
Try "that". Regardless of how it may sound to you it's, well, a kid talking. Give your child a younger voice.

Jessica blushed. She never thought of Mark as a sexual being. Come to think of it, she never really thought of Mark as anything other than wanting to cause a lot of trouble, but here he was trying to help somebody else out.
Narrative voice sounding far too much like an old uncle telling a tall tale to a bunch of kids.

I took Susan to a more private part of the park. There was a bench there too, but nobody ever seemed to go over there. It was just the two of us.

She lied down across my lap. I lifted up her dress, which I'm fairly sure embarrassed her. I then pulled down her panties, exposing her bottom to my view which probably embarrassed her even more. I raised my hand and began spanking her--very very lightly. She giggled.
Try a kids voice.

My son is such a tease! Jessica couldn't help but laugh.

[INDENT][COLOR="Blue"]I must have spanked her like that for five minutes, both of us enjoying every second of it. As I was spanking her, she was wiggling her body, which did nothing at all to get rid of my hard-on. If anything, it probably got harder. At some point, she must have noticed this because she asked if she could do something about it for me. I had no idea what she had in mind, but I was willing to let her. We'd shared so much already, so why not just a little more.
Try a kids voice and not an adult voice.

Okay, the rest of my comments would get to be redundant as hell. My main complaints are laid out fairly well, by now. Other complaints would be the absence of commas where they should be. Though, I am not the expert at technical issues that others may be. I did point out a few, though.

Now, for my redundancy...
Find the child voice and work with it. The kid spoke way too much like a narrator and the narrator sounded too much like a familiar and friendly voice telling the story.

The ending, as Mad mentioned, was rather a surprise and the mother's attitude was a bit to easy going about everything - at first. Frankly, I would rather have had the mother being a bit taken back and more gradually getting into things.

We now return you to your normal programming.