Back in August of 2016, a coworker said she wrote every day. I was inspired to take up the same concept for myself and resurrect my languishing blog. After a while, I decided that I really liked coming up with a topic and writing for a spell. It made me feel "writerly" and also increased how much time I was in my office--an emblem of my wife's love for me. After getting some positive feedback (for the most part) from people enjoying my thoughts, I decided to relocate the blog to my personal website, where I'm currently posting each day's work.
Now, however, I'm on the cusp of a new summer and I have ambitious plans to maybe actually try a little harder to perhaps begin to commence the possibility of one day in the future getting to the point of almost starting the hunt for an agent. I have written--outlined or completed--almost 17 novels since 2004. I have nothing to show for that except a large word count and a swollen Dropbox. If I really want to make that reluctant step back into the submission/query/rejection game, I will have to find time to do what I like to do least of all my writing: Editing. I've talked about this before, so I don't have to go into too much detail. Still: I hate editing. The thing about the process is, once I'm in the story, it isn't too bad. I can pick things out that I'd like to change, switch a piece here or there, and generally find ways to improve the book. But what I don't do is rewrite much--if any--of the story. I mean, I tweak a chapter here or there, maybe trim some fat in the descriptions. I definitely look for continuity errors and try to fix them. But rewriting? Not so much. The thing with that is, it makes me wonder what I'm doing wrong. I don't have enough confidence that I've done it right the first time around, but I don't know if there's something really large that would necessitate a complete revision. Having, essentially, broken Writ in Blood by tinkering without rewriting, I'm leery of jumping into a story and ending up with a mess on my hands. I think part of this comes from my consideration of how precious my writing time is. I don't get to sit down and hammer out ten pages a day. I don't write full-time (though I have some delicious moments whilst at the cabin where I can devote entire days to that very thing), so I feel like, if I'm going to write, I need to write something new. This is a problem when it comes to editing, because it doesn't feel like writing. If I remember correctly, Brandon Sanderson's brain lets him edit for a few hours a day after writing all day, as the editing process doesn't take the same mental energy and he can move through it without feeling tapped out. I'm not so fortunate: I almost always feel like what I've written is rubbish, so seeing what I've written again drains me even more than the writing does. And that leads me to my hiatus. I'm going to take the month of June off of writing daily essays. This isn't to say I won't write essays, but I'm going to dedicate the time that I normally would have devoted to something new to something old, instead. This isn't as large of a sacrifice as it sounds: I'll be gone from home for a couple of weeks throughout June, and July will see even more departures. I doubt I would have had a steady writing schedule anyway. That's all one. The point is for me to level up my editing abilities. If I had put as much time into editing my novels as I have writing these essays, I would be in a different position as a writer. I don't know if I would be a better one, necessarily, but a different one. And I think it's time I figured out what that part of my work ethic can create. I want to see myself succeed, if only in commitment, at improving my editing skills. Wish me luck. At my school, we have a daily schedule of eight class periods, each about 50 minutes long. On Fridays, we have half that, meeting with morning classes one week and afternoon classes the following. Tacked into that is a "mentoring" class, which has basically operated like a glorified home room throughout all of my time at the school.
Except this year. This year, we changed it up. Instead of having the mentoring class as an afterthought where basically anyone could teach the class, we were given more leeway in figuring out what we would want to do with the collection of students who joined the class. In my case, I proposed a creative curriculum, one in which the students would work together to make a shared fictitious world, a la Warcraft or Dungeons and Dragons. (In fact, it's directly because of this mentoring class that I got involved playing Dungeons and Dragons, which I have spread to my kids, who are spreading it to their friends in turn. It's pretty glorious, actually.) The class was a success, though not without some bumps along the way. I learned a lot about a class like this--not the least of which is that, without a single, unifying vision, it can be really hard to make a massive universe. There were also scheduling and logistic issues that I didn't think to anticipate, a reality that bothered me more when they happened than now in retrospect. Despite the downsides, I felt that it was the most successful mentoring class that I've ever had. Nevertheless, the idea of what is a mentor still doesn't full gel. Indeed, I'd argue that it's probably that lacking definition that has hobbled the mentoring program at my school for a decade. And part of the reason that I don't think I was being a "mentor" is that I don't think I really know what a mentor is. At least, I don't think I did until today. School is out for the summer, but I still have trainings to do, both today and tomorrow. I don't mind these: While I'd rather be at home doing absolutely nothing, this helps me feel like I'm not completely wasting my summer. Anyway, during the training meeting, one of the people was talking about his own educational experience, how hard it was for him, and how inadequate he felt upon going to university. Despite his rough educational beginnings, he's an incredibly well-read man. I know there are aspects of his philosophy that don't jive with mine, but in terms of having read a lot, he's got me beat. Well, of non-zombie fiction kind of reading, anyway. Because I know we don't see eye-to-eye on some things (most of it superficial, which allows us to still have a worthwhile relationship), it made me wonder what in his path to becoming educated differed so much from mine. (Yes, that's making a fairly large assumption that I'm educated, ha ha, I get the joke.) Some of it has to be the training: I don't know what his path was, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't the humanities. For me, I studied analyses, critical readings, and methods of writing and reading throughout college. I read mostly from the Western Tradition, but I also read plenty of things that challenged and confused me. What I got whilst in college, though, was (with only a couple of exceptions) a scaffold of mentors off of which I could build my own thoughts and understandings. Looking back, there were a good three of the professors I met during my time at UVU who engaged with me--sometimes it was before or after class, sometimes it was really taking time during it--that helped me to understand and engage with the texts we were studying. In other words, I found people to help me speak to--and hear--the texts. Reading is a fantastic thing. I recommend more people read more and read more broadly. But there's also a libertarian assumption that the self-motivated effort is sufficient for "understanding" a book (which I put in quotes to be pretentious and also to show that there's more going on inside the book than is easily visible). That is, the individual's response (in literary criticism, it's called, quite creatively, "reader response") to a text provides the meaning of the piece. Though there's some truth to that, I think that a person who studies the humanities by herself is likely to bump into some major problems. Aside from the fact that an echo chamber could be easily created, the whole point--so far as I understand of it--for a mentor is to help engage with text. I think of what I do with students when reading Paradise Lost. The first hurdle to overcome is the thing that gives it the unsurpassed beauty: Milton's language. Some of it is just plain archaic--he uses adamantine to mean diamond, for example. Footnotes help with that, sure. That's not mentoring. I can map out the chronology of the book (which is all over the place and is beautiful in its narrative strength as a result), which doesn't work for footnotes, but maybe an introductory essay (which no one reads). This is textual fact, nothing that can really be disputed. "Satan awakens in Hell in Book 1 of the poem" isn't controversial, nor really up for interpretation--in part because there's no need to interpret it. What do I do, then, for my students? Well, I show them how the language and the structure of the poem work together to generate particular effects, then look at the effects' effects. I model interpretive options by posing questions, pointing to potential answers, and striving to generate interest in students' pursuit of their own answers. As I go, I have to encourage them to understand what it is they're thinking as they're in the text, as well as in retrospect. This, I think, is what it means to be mentored. It's both a process of modeling how a thing is done, but also giving the tools to the mentee so that she can practice doing the same. And, like any artist, simply because the tools are the same doesn't mean that the product at the end will be. Anyone who picks up a paintbrush isn't going to be a Da Vinci, and neither will everyone reading Paradise Lost become a Harold Bloom (thank goodness). Yes, students will start to emulate their mentors. It's an inevitability. Heck, I noticed my own writing becoming more snobby the more I read Harold Bloom. And this, I think, is why reading one's way into being education is fraught with problems. Because there's no course correction: The conversation is one way, the author to the reader. And though a reader might disagree with what's written, there's nowhere else to go, save more books (not a bad thing, necessarily, but time-consuming enough that progress can become frustrated, and broader points or theses may never coalesce). Whenever I teach a philosopher (say, Marx), I always frame their philosophy as, "According to Marx, the bourgeoise…" or "For Marx, the idea that exploiting people for monetary gain is immoral…" In other words, I give them a text to begin discussing the idea with, and then provide the additional questions and answers that the text excites. This allows for a dialogue, instead of a monologue, with the text. There are ways to reduce the need of a mentor--or, perhaps it's better to say supplement the mentor. Reading with a pencil in hand, annotating the text, provides an opportunity for the reader to slow down and think more critically about what's really being said and how she feels about it. Writing essays, I've found, has helped me to better think about texts that I've recently experienced--hence the frequent "recommendation" tags on many of these essays. If nothing else, this writing process helps the brain to work the idea over on its own, rather than letting them fester. And, if you think about it, part of the reason that there are book clubs in the first place is because having an opportunity to talk about a book with someone else can sometimes be even more enjoyable than reading the book in the first place. (A book club, I should say, isn't really a mentor/mentee relationship unless you happen to have an expert on the text who's in the group. It is, however, an excellent way of better digesting a book.) I realize that there's an assumption in my writing here: I think that my job is important, I want to figure out what a mentor is, I want to make it so that my mentoring is powerful and remembered. In other words, I have a reason to argue that self-education can only go so far and eventually one needs help along the way. I recognize that bias. But that doesn't necessarily mean that I'm wrong. It doesn't, of course, mean I'm right, either. Still, of all the definitions I've tried to figure out for being a mentor, this is the one that makes the most sense. That's progress. I like standup comedy. In fact, I like comedy. Not only is laughing good, but I also use it as a chance to mine material that I can repurpose and throw out at my classes. If I had to venture a guess, most students like my classes (those that like my classes, of course) in no small part because of the atmosphere. While we talk about serious things and treat those things seriously, I also leaven the experience with a lot of bathos, jokes, puns, and random humor.
Admittedly, my sense of humor is not aging well. A huge treasury of jokes are dependent on an intimate knowledge of '90s-era Simpsons references, and not a small number of them also pull on Strong Bad emails from the early 2000s. Part of the reason I stay on Twitter, aside from being addicted, is that Twitter is a constant source of hilarious jokes and memetic comedy. (In fact, I think that might be why my jokes aren't aging well: Memetic comedy is so rapid that, by the time I figure out how to use, say, Condescending Willy Wonka, it's fallen out of use and kids don't understand it anymore.) Nevertheless, books like Dad is Fat by Jim Gaffigan help me round out my own standup routines. See, I believe in the dog-and-pony shows (though I personally harbor no fondness for dogs and think ponies are just equine quitters) as being an avenue for getting a worthwhile class moving. I also think that humor is useful in allowing relationships to grow. Disparate senses of humor generally lead, in my experience, to something of a disappointing relationship. More than any of that, though, is my basic philosophy: If you can't laugh at stuff, you'll cry instead, and that wrecks your contacts and/or mascara. Dad is Fat was particularly enjoyable because it's one of the many audiobooks that I crank through. This one, however, was read by the author, so it meant that I spent the past week or so listening to Jim Gaffigan routines. While I'd heard some of his jokes on a special or two, it's been a long time since I've experienced them. That gave the book a freshness and familiarity, like ripening cantaloupe. Except I don't like cantaloupe. So don't take that idea too far. The book is a collection of essays about his life as a father of five in a two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan. He explains the logistical difficulties of being in that sort of situation, as well as enjoyable anecdotes about his hectic and busy life. He brings up some of the embarrassing moments of being a parent, and sprinkles an occasional profound parental thought every once in a while. They were rare and fleeting, so the only one I really remember is the idea that being a parent, though it costs you money, sleep, and hair, is a worthwhile endeavor. Unless he's lying, Gaffigan seems to really enjoy his family and likes the way his life has turned out. As far as a book goes, it's pretty good. Much like with Terry Pratchett, the humor is one of the main reasons that you're there. In Gaffigan's case, it's the only reason you're there. And there we have the issue with trying to critique a comedy: Its great measure is whether or not it makes you laugh. It did for me. I snorted and chortled and once, I think, I even guffawed. In that sense, it's absolutely a great read. If you don't like his funny voices, random asides, or imaginative (and imagined) conversations, then you'll probably dislike the book. There are enough "You gotta be a parent to get it" kind of jokes that you'll likely be entertained. He doesn't swear beyond an occasional "mild" one and he keeps the dirty and/or sacrilegious jokes to a minimum. So he's "clean" funny--another nice change from a lot of the humor that I see elsewhere. But is it a good book? On that one, I don't really know. He's no David Sedaris, who is both funny and a thoughtful writer--perhaps one of the best writing in non-fiction today--but he's not trying to be another Sedaris, either. And the fact that I feel this way is indicative of the problem of comedy in literature--using the word really broadly here. Jokes are powerful. They're uplifting (sometimes) and they can help illuminate what was previously dark. In some cases, they can be life-saving--and I don't mean that figuratively. Yet, while I easily and happily recommend Dad is Fat, I don't necessarily know that it's…good. And my worry is that, because it's a comedy book, I feel like it can't be good the way that other fiction is good. That I've stacked the deck against Gaffigan and writers like him. Hmm. Now that I've put that all down, it kinda makes me glum, depressed that I don't better understand what I expect out of a comedy book and why I think I might be wrong in feeling the way I do. Pffsh. Forget it. Gaffigan sucks. Though I didn't follow through with it last year, I tried to come up with a summer schedule in the hopes that I could have some structure and, within that structure, feel like I did something with my time off.
See, I have a hard time ever feeling like I've completed anything when I'm not at work. When I'm teaching, it's pretty clear when things are done: Grades are in the grade book, attendance is marked, one class or another is in the process of going through the lesson. It's all easy there. At home, what does it mean to be successful? To write a daily essay? Sure, but I do that daily--which should be clear from the adjective daily in there. Getting out of bed at a reasonable hour? Okay, maybe, but what's reasonable? My friend, who wakes up at 4:30am (which means in the morning…I didn't know they had that) during the school year so that he can work out maintains that schedule throughout the summer. For me, I wake up at 6:50am during the school year. I don't want to do that during the summer. But if I get up too early, I'll be cranky and directionless. That's what's hard about it: I'll get more done, but I'll feel less satisfied. Plus I'll grouch at my children too much. I have to find a balance of walking up deliberately, but also getting up at a time that feels restful. I also need to figure out what I want to get done. I know that most days the schedule will be messed up because I have other things planned. Still, I want there to be a baseline, an expectation to work on. Not only that, I have to be able to say that I have daily goals. "An essay" is one thing, but what about my book? I need to have the outline 100% ready when I go up to the cabin next week (!) and it's not. So, that should be a part of my schedule. Yet it's not. At least, not in a way that's easily measurable. Anyway, despite its vagueness, I think I'm hoping for something like this:
Again, I don't know if this is really going to happen. Looking at the schedule, I have a lot of days where it'll be messed up. (This upcoming Monday, for example, won't go this way at all because we have to get our kids to their week-long summer camp.) Nevertheless, I think it's a good idea to have some sort of summer schedule. Note: I wrote a similar concept about Steampunk Batgirl as a backstory for my wife's costume that she's making for a convention this fall (and, also, Halloween). While I like Batman, I main Spider-Man. I thought I'd take a chance to flesh out some of the ideas that I have about the steampunk Spider-Man character that my wife and I have made to explain my steampunk costume. I should also point out that it's technically crystalpunk, since we don't really use steam, but that's an even more esoteric genre. So: Steampunk it is.
A young Peter Parker moved into a mid-nineteenth century New York replete with crime when he and his guardians, Uncle Ben and Aunt May, left their home in Dublin in the hopes of encouraging Peter's interest: crystal- and steam-tech. New York, by this time, was the hotbed for inventions and applications of crystal-powered technology, and its frequent cousin, steam-tech. These twin power sources thrust New York into the forefront of world technology. Crystal-powered skyships cruised through the skies, a swarm above the city as thick as the traffic within. Moving to Kings, a suburb of the city, the Parkers were reviled. Though their family line came from England, no one could doubt their Irish roots. Forced into a demeaning textile job in a factory owned by the Manfredi, an Italian mob family, Uncle Ben began to waste away. Meanwhile, Peter--a scrawny kid with more interest in the natural philosophy of crystal-tech--had his own struggles. Trying to fit in with the local kids was easy--provided they were of an Irish background, like him. The New York natives would ridicule him, and more than once he came home with a bloody lip or a blackened eye thanks to bigots who overheard his accent. When Ben noticed Peter's condition, he pulled the boy aside. "What's happening Peter?" he asked with his rich Irish accent. "They're beating me, Uncle Ben. For no reason but how I talk." "You're gonna have to learn to stand up for yourself," Uncle Ben had replied. "And then, once you know how to do that, you have to learn to stand up for those who can't. That's what we Irish do. It's what we Americans do. It's what we Parkers do. Be strong, lad, and you'll pull along all right." Peter, thoughtful, nodded at his uncle. It was true that they had moved to America in order to have a better life, but that didn't mean they would have an easier life. For Peter, this was a small price to pay to be a part of Smythe's Crystal Mercantile, the outlet of the unique crystal-tech creations of the Smythe Science Corporation. Though young, Peter managed to get himself a job at the Mercantile by helping haul the crates and stock the shelves so that well-to-do New Yorkers could purchase their crystal devices. Everything from pocket watches to laundry machines was available to those who had the cash, the intricate gears and gauges needed to utilize the crystal-tech only one aspect of what Peter loved about the technology. His meager earnings were added to Aunt May's seamstress work and Uncle Ben's factory pay. With all three jobs, they managed to make ends meet. Peter studied as much as he could in the evenings, but resources were scarce and hard to come by. Plus the cost of burning a lantern by which to read could sometimes be too much for them to afford. Hunger pinched his belly. His hair grew long and greasy. And yet, Peter was happy. He was close to crystal-tech. He was in America. He had a job at a worthwhile company. What could go wrong? The truth about Smythe's Crystal Mercantile was simple: It was a front. The Smythe family's hands were just as dirty as the Manfredi's, dealing in all sorts of illegal activities, including slave-hunting, gambling, prostitution, and dreg distribution (dregs being ingestible remains of crystal-tech, a dangerous way of enhancing human strength, endurance, and other capabilities--with a downside of addiction, violence, and even death as a potential price addicts might pay). On one side, the Smythes were into the worst, darkest dealings of a rotten city. On the other, they provided steady work and valuable products. Peter knew nothing of this. He only knew that he'd been given a job, despite only being fifteen. Granted, it wasn't the same as building crystal-tech--his true dream--but he was around crystal-tech, and that was something. It was much cleaner, more efficient, and less greasy than steam-tech, which was the primary power of the Manfredi's operations. And, much as Peter didn't know of the Smythe's real dealings, he didn't know that the Manfredi family and the Smythe family were long-standing rivals, both anxious to destroy the other, but unable to determine a way of doing it that didn't turn into a full-scale mob war. One day, Peter was ordered to accompany a shipment of a newly-created, experimental crystal-tech weapons to one of the Smythe's cronies, a man named Hammerhead. When Peter and the other workers arrived in their crystal-powered wagon, Hammerhead stepped out to inspect the merchandise. They were in a seedy part of town, but one known to everyone. Hammerhead was one of Smythe's best customers--and he was also a target for the Manfredi family, too. Unluckily for Peter and his coworkers, the Manfredi had dispatched an assassin named Tombstone to eliminate Hammerhead, and the attack happened just as Hammerhead left his hideout to inspect the buckboard filled with weapons. Men fired on each other, their guns sparking the night with their crystal- and steam-powered flashes. Cries of pain and groans of death filled the air. For his part, Peter had taken shelter in the dilapidated warehouse that Hammerhead used as his home base. The two men, obviously enhanced by dregs, punched and wrestled with each other as gunfire peppered the area. One bullet flew through the flimsy wall near where Peter was hiding. Smashing into the upright containers of an experimental dreg, the bullet caused a sudden rush of the chemical to spray all over. Peter, cowering nearby, was drenched in the dregs. Coughing and spluttering, Peter lurched toward an exit, an old door that was on the far end of the warehouse. A massive padlock kept the chains on it, a detail that Peter would have noticed earlier were it not for his panic. Grabbing the handle in a futile attempt to get free, he shook the door. As he did, he accidentally disturbed a nest of spiders. Each bite was a tiny flame, where not only did the creatures' venom enter him, but the dregs that was outside of his body now was coming inside of it. Screaming in pain and terror, Peter thrashed his way toward the only exit he knew worked: The one he'd ducked into when the bullets started flying. Just as he got out of the building, an ill-timed explosion of the weapons threw him and the still-fighting Tombstone and Hammerhead in different directions. For Peter, he landed in the nearby river, the water washing off some of the dregs and all of the spiders. Floating downstream, barely conscious for the pain and trauma, Peter eventually managed to drag himself home. When he arrived, Aunt May, terrified at what had happened, pulled him to bed and began nursing him. Peter was sick for a week. By the time he felt better, everything else had gotten worse. Without the income of Peter's work, Uncle Ben had to put even more time into his job. In an exhaustion-fueled slip, he had dropped an important piece of equipment, causing the entire factory to shut down for a few hours while engineers fixed the problem. Silvio Manfredi had promptly fired Uncle Ben, who was now scouring the city for work. Additionally, some strange men had been stopping by frequently, trying to talk to Peter. Aunt May was scared, as they gave the impression of someone who didn't like being told no. Now that Peter was recovered, he was feeling good. Better than that--he felt amazing. Sensational. He'd never felt so good. Peter headed into the city to try to find Uncle Ben, who had been gone for two days at this point. As he went around, he kept feeling as if something were tickling the back of his neck--like a web that clung to his skin but couldn't be brushed away. At last, the feeling was so pronounced it almost hurt him, and he involuntarily dove to one side, down an alleyway. But instead of going a step or two, he only landed after sailing nearly fifteen feet from where he'd been standing. Shocked, he turned to look at where he'd been, only to see two men staring at him, their eyes wide and angry. "Who are you? What do you want?" "Mr. Manfredi sent us to ask you some questions," said man. He and his partner began walking down the alleyway, blocking the exit. Peter backed up until he bumped into the brick of the building behind him. "I don't have anything to say to him," said Peter, putting one of his hands up on the wall, more out of instinct than purpose. "I don't know him at all." "Well, he's curious what happened last week. He wants information that only you can give him." "We got attacked. He already knows that." "But we only have a couple of men who survived. And a little boy like you? A slip of a lad--a Smythe boy if ever I saw one--making it through? Surviving that kind of a firefight?" The thug shrugged and nudged his partner. "That seems suspicious, wouldn't you say?" They continued to approach. "Yeah," said the partner. "I should say so." "Stay away!" "What are you going to do, kid? Climb the wall?" The men laughed and then, as one, jumped forward to grab him. The web in the back of his neck buzzed and he jumped, scrambling against the sheer wall for any sort of grip. To his surprise--and the obvious surprise of the men beneath him--Peter only stopped once he'd palmed his way twenty feet above the street. Uncertain of what was happening, Peter decided that he was better off not talking to the men, swarmed up the side of the building, and ran home. When he arrived, the thugs had beaten him to it. Heart in his guts, Peter pushed open the wrecked pieces of the door. The two men from the alleyway turned around, their bloody fists curled. Ben lay on the floor, unmoving. Aunt May sobbed over the body. "You should've talked to us, kid," said the first thug, turning his attention to Peter. "It would've saved us all a lot of pain." Peter's rage sparked inside of him, and the humiliation and pain that he'd suffered through the sundry beatings all surfaced simultaneously. Charging forward faster than they had time to anticipate, he punched the thug in the chest. He heard snapping beneath his knuckles and he knew he'd broken the man's sternum. The other thug grabbed him, only to have his arms broken and then be bodily thrown across the room. He slumped to the ground, unconscious. Peter looked at his trembling hands. He hadn't meant to hit them so hard. How had this happened? Then he faced Aunt May, who stared at him with wide eyes. "Peter? Wha--" Before she could say anything, Uncle Ben stirred. Peter dropped to his side. He could tell by the severity of the pummeling Ben had taken that he wouldn't survive. He was dying. "Peter," said Ben through broken teeth. "Don't carry anger. Don't carry hatred. Show how you're a good person by what you do. Make me proud, lad." His bleary eyes flickered to May. "I love you, May O'Reilly." Then he slipped away. May and Peter didn't have any money to have Ben be buried in anything other than a pauper's grave. Shortly thereafter, they lost their small apartment. One of May's clients took pity on them and let the Parkers sleep in the cellar of her brownstone. Peter didn't dare return to Smythe's Mercantile, and the anger he felt toward Manfredi for having fired Uncle Ben, then sending his goons to attack his family. Unable to settle down, Peter decided he needed to do something. His powers made it easy for him to slip into Smythe's Mercantile and pick up a device that he'd noticed before: a wrist-mounted water nozzle. It had a lot of purported uses--help with ironing, ease of cleaning windows, and even for practical jokes--but Peter thought he could do something different with it. By combining some of the other available products at the Mercantile, Peter assembled a contraption that could fit on his arm and would allow him to fire a length of sticky glue that would harden incredibly fast and had a great sticking power. He dubbed them his "webshooters", then disguised them by getting the entire thing to fit inside of some empty whiskey flasks that he'd found in the garbage. Knowing what happened when someone knew who he was, Peter took an old bandana from a clothesline three stories above the New York streets, wrapped it around his face, and pulled a cap low over his ears. Then he went to pay the Manfredi family a visit. Climbing up to the topmost floor of the Manfredi's high-rise, Peter arrived in time to see Alistair Smythe, the heir-apparent to the Smythe family name and fortune. Peter's jaw dropped as he overheard the heated argument, of how Manfredi had sent the assassin after Hammerhead, Smythe's right-hand-man, and how it would now be war between the two crime families. Peter's sense of abuse at having been a part of a criminal enterprise and his rage at having lost Uncle Ben because of these men made him act rashly, and he burst in on the two men. Surprised at the scrawny person breaking through the windows, neither man moved at first. "Who the devil do you think you are?" asked Manfredi. Peter hesitated only a moment. He hadn't thought of that. Deepening his voice, he said, "I'm a Spider-Man. And I'm here to stop you." Smythe opened fire, but his spider-sense kept him safe. The sound of breaking glass, shouting, and firing of weapons let the men outside know something bad was happening, and the suspicious mobsters began shooting at each other. In the chaos of a sudden mob war, Peter managed to escape. When he got home, May was waiting for him. She asked him what he was doing and what he was thinking. He explained that he'd learned that both Smythe and Manfredi were corrupt and that their exploits and rivalries were part of what was keeping the city rotten. "I have to help, May," said Peter. "I have to do something. It's what Uncle Ben would want." "Well," said May after some thinking, "I can't let you out looking like that." Taking many of the pilfered pieces that Peter managed to get, she sewed him a costume and with it, Peter Parker began his career as Steampunk Spider-Man. Naughty Dog is well known in the video game industry as making some of the toppest of the notch games. They are expert storytellers, exquisite craftsmen and -women, and have shown an eye for detail that is, in many respects, unparalleled.
In other words, I'm a fan of their games. I played a little bit of their Crash Bandicoot games back on the original PlayStation, but that wasn't really my thing. However, when they helped launch the PlayStation 3 with their new intellectual property, Uncharted, I was quickly interested. The lushness of the jungles, the subtle interactions with the environment, and the enjoyable retread of the Indiana Jones character with someone who's actually charming and fun to be around. I remember, however, not quite knowing what I was getting into when I first joined Nathan Drake for his adventure. I was trying to cross a fallen tree when I saw another person on the far side of the ravine. Oh, I thought. Who's that? Maybe I can talk to him or something. Then I was getting shot at by said person and scrambling for cover and following the prompts on how to shoot the guy dead. Okay, I thought. I guess I'm not…um, a good guy? Drake didn't seem to care that he'd just shot a man dead at fifty yards with his handgun. And the subsequent path of the games continued to show him to be a remorseless killing machine. Kicking people off of ledges, blowing them up, breaking their necks, and a dozen more inventive ways of slaughtering them. That's what Nathan Drake stands for…that and destroying/pillaging cultural and historical artifacts of priceless value. On a moral scale, despite his charming smile and quick banter, Nate Drake is a cold-blooded killer and repulsive human being. So why do I like these games so much? I think part of it comes from the fact that, once I recognized the kind of world that I was in, I could adjust my expectations. I still find his behavior unacceptable (and the fact that the endless streams of enemies keep coming at him, despite seeing hundreds of their friends die by continuing the fight, is one of the weirdest bits of action-story logic that I've ever seen), but I also recognize why it's set up that way. Uncharted 4, as are all of the Uncharted games, is a very game-y video game. There's nothing about the story, the locales, or the experience that make any sense outside of a video game purview. And the agon in the game makes the action/reward feedback loop into microsecond increments. The best way to do that is through simulated violence--that's why so many video games are violent. There is almost no waiting between action (pull the trigger) and reaction/reward (killing the target). Drake guns down lots of guys because when they're shot, you know that you've done what you were setting out to do. The game is broken into four primary components: Shooting enemies, navigating the terrain, solving puzzles, and the story itself. That's an ascending scale of time between action and reward. The killing of enemies is the instant reaction. Navigating the terrain is often done quickly, but there's a gap that the game utilizes to expand both the amount of time you're in the world and delay the success of the choice. Jumping over a rotting bridge takes a half second. That bridge starts to collapse, so you press the X button and grab onto a ledge. Then you tap the button again to clamber up. All of this takes, maybe, three or four seconds. The original action's result is then awarded and you move to the next area of navigation. The third level of action and then eventual reward is in the form of the puzzles, which requires experimentation, observation, and a small amount of skill. This delay is carefully constructed so as not to put too much narrative or emotional slow-down on the game. In fact, if you get stuck in one area for too long, the game will offer to give you a hint. The game is concerned with too heavy of a momentum drift, as it stops being fun (the ludic aspect of gaming can never be understated), and the desire to press forward suddenly falls entirely into the fourth and final category. The stories that Uncharted games tell are all the same: Drake has a hint about a new treasure and undiscovered city. Someone else is wanting the treasure. They will shoot at each other and blow up the undiscovered city until Drake wins…or the player gives up and turns off the game. Despite that formula, Nathan Drake's stories are really compelling. This is particularly the case of Uncharted 4, which is the end of Drake's story (its subtitle is A Thief's End, after all). It fleshes out Drake's childhood, which was (unless I misremember) started in the previous game. It shows some of his familial ties, pulling him out of retirement for "one last hunt". More interesting to me, as an almost-middle-aged gamer, it shows Nathan and Elena, his love interest from previous games, in a fairly healthy marriage. While Nathan's choices put strain on the marriage, that is part of the drama of the game, rather than a throwaway moment. I really enjoyed seeing a married couple--equals in basically everything the game requires you to do--exploring their relationship and sacrificing for each other and supporting each other and even revealing complicated, hard to express emotions, all in the backdrop of an adventure game. It was surprisingly mature, but not in an "adult situations" kind of mature. It was emotionally mature--a necessary step for a guy who has had the same skill set as a kid pull him through his adulthood. (Most video game characters have arrested development in some way or another, it seems, so it's cool to see Drake coming out of that in this last game.) And there's both the success and flaw of Uncharted 4: Its storytelling is so adroit and adept, the acting of the digital characters so well done and convincing, that whenever the other levels of action/reaction rear their heads, I'm pushed right back into the unbelievable world of video games. Each Uncharted game has the same dissonance: What happens in the cutscenes (the times when the story advances without player input) is treated with more gravitas and reality than what happens in the gameplay. I think it was Uncharted 2 where Nate wakes up on a train, shot through the gut, and has to escape it as it's falling off of a cliff. The set piece is thrilling--in fact, every game has a memorable moment like this, whether it's the almost-death of an exploding train car, falling out of a collapsing building, or surviving a prolonged chase sequence through an African city--but majorly incongruous to what just happened in the cutscene. Why does it matter if Drake is shot during a cutscene? Villains brandish guns at the hero all of the time, but there isn't a real feeling of threat because Drake literally gets shot--not just shot at, either--all of the time in the gameplay. Only when the story is happening do guns do damage, it seems. Despite the way I've described it, I don't think this dissonance ruins the game. While it's a problem--as is the constant swearing; like, honestly, these games should be rated M for constant, pervasive swearing and the fact that you're gunning over 600 people down over the course of 15 hours of play--I believe the franchise has managed to balance the issues well enough that I'm willing to let the problems slide. This emotional sleight-of-hand is an impressive trick, particularly as games themselves are becoming more refined. It shows that craftsmanship matters. I care about Nathan and Elena's marriage because I saw them in their home before the adventure began, and the animations and subtle visual cues from the digital actors were so natural and accessible that I couldn't help but feel that these were real people. That empathetic connection is a powerful tool that helps pull me through the problem areas. As a writer, that's a good lesson to learn. As a gamer, it's a fun game to play. As an audience, it's a satisfying story to hear. Yeah, Uncharted 4 is worth* it. --- * I like this franchise, but I'm not hardcore about it. I played each one when they came out, then moved on with my life. I've never returned to any of them, I don't think. So the experience of Uncharted 4 was, to a certain extent, lost on me: The nostalgia of a story coming to an end, of hearing the characters make reference to previous adventures that I only dimly remember, didn't operate the way it was supposed to. If you're going to give this game a go, you really are doing yourself a disservice if you don't play the previous games first. There's no need to introduce any of the familiar faces, as the story is expecting you to already have that backstory. This, by the way, is not a bad thing: It gives you an excuse to play some really high quality games. That sounds like a win to me. One of my absolute favorite parts of teaching high school is getting to be a part of the annual commencement ceremonies. Not only do I get a front row seat (perks of being a teacher!), but I also get to see the kids that I worked with when they were sophomores standing up, receiving applause, and celebrating their achievements. The years of high school are filled with changes. Some of those changes are even good, and I love to see the culmination of years of effort. It's a powerful thing.
I really like the grammar of my life. Summers, Fall- and Spring Breaks, holidays--they all provide the commas and semicolons of the run-on sentence of being a teacher. And, at the end of that lengthy experience, we end with an appropriate, significant exclamation point. The paragraph of summer time ends with a new sentence, a new experience--the same twenty-six letters recombined; the familiar rebuilt into something specific and new, yet reassuring in its outline--and I begin again. But that exclamation point is so helpful. Not only does it delineate the end of the sentence emphatically, it is unique. We don't celebrate commencement until they're really ready to commence their lives (inasmuch as they're ever truly "ready"--they always think they are, but they rarely have it as together as they assumed). Now, I have to admit: Graduation is a comparatively low threshold. Yes, high school can be hard, but in terms of the way it's structured, failure truly does take a concerted effort. A number of factors have to be in motion for a student to fail completely, insomuch that someone who doesn't graduate really has missed surpassing the basic minimum requirements for a member of society. If life were a video game, then high school is basically the tutorial level. Failing the tutorial is just embarrassing. But it's also not a de facto reason to celebrate. "You passed the level where you can't die and the computer tells you exactly what button to push? Yay! Let's have a party and make you wear uncomfortable hats and robes for an afternoon." Nevertheless, we've decided, as a society, to mark the occasion. We imbue it (and so many other things in life) with the meaning we need, and I'm willing to buy into that wholesale. I love graduation. I love the music, the names, the cheering. I guess I'm not as much of a fan of the creeping heat and the way the sweat congregates at the small of my back as a few hundred people cram into a single place. Still, it's a wonderful opportunity. The past couple of years, I got the chance to talk at the rostrum for a couple of minutes to hand out a departmental award. This was always fun: I'd find a Shakespeare quote and make sure that I added it in. I would try to find a positive memory about the student to share. Last year, in my hilarious way of speaking, I thanked the students for this last opportunity to bore them to sleep with what I had to say. See? Hilarious. I gave up my position as department chair this year, so I didn't have to stand up and say anything about the graduate we gifted a book to, but I enjoyed the experience in my seat. One experience, in particular, is important: I had a kid, when he was a sophomore, who would put his head down in class almost every single day. He claimed it was because he was cold. (pfft. My room was always humid and stinky or frozen and stinky, usually within about ten minutes of each other. So he couldn't have been cold all of the time.) Anyway, I told him that I was going to sleep through him getting his diploma. Well, promise given, promise kept. As soon as he mounted the stage, I closed my eyes and tipped my head over as if sleeping. Actually, I was just cold. Once the official stuff is over, the grads meandered to the foyer where parents, friends, family, and somewhat dazed looking grandparents were waiting to congratulate, put leis filled with rapidly melting chocolate about the graduates' necks, and do a lot of fist pumping, back slapping, and tear wiping. I'm not a highly social person: I have a handful of people I like (by people, I normally mean my wife, kids, and books) and the rest I tolerate because I'm human enough to need a job so I can afford food and books (though not always in that order). Walking around a bunch of strangers who all have the beginnings of sweat stains on their armpits and making small talk is not my idea of a good time. Except for now. I really, really like this part. It's strange, I know, but there's something fulfilling about catching up. Old coworkers show up, alumni, and parents I recognize from our brief parent/teacher conference interactions. Sometimes it's clear to see the parents' features in the kids. Other times, it's a mystery, and I finally learn certain familial connections that I hadn't seen before. "Oh, he's your brother? But he's tall and you're short! I never would have guessed." I'm joking (mostly) about some of this, but in the beaten way of friendship, I do want to write seriously about one student who really made a difference in my life. See, I had a short time where I practiced soccer with the girls' team. During that time, I once accidentally knocked one of the sophomores over. I teach tenth grade, but I tend to only get about half of them in my class, as there's another teacher who handles the remainder. This wasn't "one of mine", so I didn't even know her name. Yet I hit her hard enough to send her sprawling, bruising her tailbone. In an attempt to patch over how embarrassed I was that I'd accidentally injured a student (one of my great fears, as a matter of fact), I called her "Friend", as in, "I'm so sorry about that! We're still friends, right?" "Oh, yeah," she said sarcastically. "Totally friends." Well, it stuck. I saw her in the halls. "Hey, Friend!" Saw her at an assembly. "Hey, Friend!" Noticed her in the front office. "Hello, Friend!" During her junior year, she was part of my Shakespeare class, but we didn't work together very much. I was trying to help out other members of the team, and as an actress, she was already well developed and didn't really need my fumbling critiques. Still, we had a good time, and she was always a good reader and participant in the class discussions for when we weren't doing acting stuff. The beginning of this year saw a new Shakespeare class. And, to my surprise, Friend was in there, too. I was happy that I would get a fellow Bardolator in the very small class who would, perhaps, help pull some of the weight a discussion-based class incurs. She did great, piping in with thoughtful readings and all sorts of significant additions that an actor would see and I, an intellectual, would not. Friend then signed up for a second helping of the same class, even though she knew I would be repeating a lot of the same stories and advice. Throughout this, her senior year, we made a lot of progress and had some excellent conversations. She confided some of her frustrations and worries to me--nothing large or alarming, just the typical "High school is coming to an end and I don't know if I'm ready" kind of stuff--and I was gratified to know that she didn't bear a grudge for my mistake two years before. This may not sound surprising, but for me it was a bit of shock. I mean, Friend is one of the kindest people I know, someone who genuinely cares for others. Still, I'm a teacher who (accidentally) hurt her. Like, physically harmed her. Often, a teacher feels lucky if she's given one chance to make a good impression on a student. The circulation of gossip and rumor and skewed (and real) experiences of a high school are, if anything, concentrated in a small school like mine. As a result, a lot of kids have preconceived notions about a teacher or a class, and there isn't much a teacher can do to change the kids' minds. Sometimes, through humor (in my experience, at least) and some subversion of expectations, I've managed to win over some kids. Other times, I'm certain, I have not. So when a kid has a genuine reason to mistrust or even dislike a teacher--"Yeah, he seriously hurt my tailbone. I don't want to take any classes with him"--yet doesn't, it comes as a surprise. To me, at least. Having Friend forgive me and then move on to become one of my favorite students (yes, of course I have favorite students: It's parents who aren't allowed to have favorites, not teachers) was, in some ways, shocking. Also shocking is that I've lost my Friend. Our previous relationship is over--I'm no longer her teacher--and she's moving on to bigger and better things. This is right and proper. But for the first time in my ten years at my school, I nearly cried at graduation. Yes, despite having taught for so long and having seen so many students--many of whom I still miss deeply and am always happy to see them again, whether it's in real life (the better one) or online (the more frequent one)--I finally felt a genuine departure, a real break with a former student. I almost cried, then, for a very simple reason: I had to say goodbye to my Friend. My hand hurts from signing so many yearbooks. My unending popularity probably comes because I sign anything that the students put in front of me, regardless of whether or not they wanted me to write in it.
I like yearbook day. I think the chaos of the day is counterbalanced by the sense of closure, excitement, and bittersweet energy that comes with saying goodbye. We have graduation tomorrow, but that's not an official school day. Kids come to this last day because they want their yearbooks and to see their friends. Otherwise, why would they bother? So, yeah, it's totally a bribe to get them to return for one last huzzah. We always have an assembly where students are awarded for their achievements during the year. We applaud and cheer and smile as kids gain recognition for all sorts of things--different departmental awards, exemplary behavior, service. One thing that was particularly cool this year was the grand total of scholarships awarded to individuals of the senior class: about $2 million. For a graduating class of 94, that's a pretty hefty number, if I do say so myself. Despite the fact that we didn't have a quidditch match at the end of the assembly, I'm still sore. My coworker started an ultimate frisbee team this year, which did very well under his tutelage. We used the annual sports match of faculty versus students, but with a disc instead of a quaffle. I have to admit, I was more than a little jealous: his practices were daily (I think?) from 6:00am until 7:30 or 7:45am, with tons of that hideous running that so many sports require, and he was able to recruit something in the neighborhood of more than 40 students. I had to cancel quidditch because I couldn't get a dozen kids to consistently show up. I don't hold any animosity to my coworker. I'm really happy for him, actually, as he's a passionate ultimate frisbee-er (frisbeeer? Frisian? Discean?) and that sort of support is encouraging. But I can't help but feel a sense of rejection by the broader school culture. Most everyone who tried quidditch really enjoys it, but not enough to make it a priority. So I passed the torch, but out of a sense of duty and reciprocation, I also played. I'm not good at ultimate frisbee, and I haven't run since, like, November, so I wasn't much of a help to the faculty team (we lost on a next-point-wins catch). After the game was over, I showered and changed, then went out to the gym where tables and chairs had been set up. I never buy a yearbook. I missed getting one my first year, so I figured, if I can't have the whole set, why bother? I've regretted that, but not enough to course-correct. On the plus side, it means I don't have to worry about losing my book, or kids writing something mean (they probably wouldn't). Those aren't much when it comes to "pluses" for not having a yearbook, but it's what I've got. I wrote and drew (usually a piggie, or sometimes a bee, and occasionally a cartoon Shakespeare) in easily over a hundred kids' yearbooks. The time was pleasant, even enjoyable. Normally, the kids start trickling free around one o'clock. This year, it was three and still students stuck around. I find this surprising, in part because summer is now here. Officially. So why hang out at school any longer than necessary? But I think it also speaks to the way the students feel about the school. For a lot of them (obviously, not all), it's safe, it's home. They feel comfortable and accepted. My school, for all its faults, really does something real to a great many students. I have some ideas about what they might be, but there's always a granular piece of je ne sais quoi that is a part of the school's success. And maybe that's a worthwhile essay in and of itself. But I need to stop. My hand hurts. It was yearbook day, after all. I talked about how I'm excited for the sequel I'm writing this summer. I'm also excited that I'm excited about it. And though some of the other books I've plotted were interesting, I felt as though I knew the story well enough through outlining that I didn't have the same drive to see what the book looked like in its full(er) form.
And that's led me to think about my writing process. I have a lot of words written this year. According to my ever-handy (and, all things considered, fairly accurate) spreadsheet, I have written just shy of 250,000 words since 1 January. That…is not a small number, especially since we're not even out of May yet. Most novels that are released in mainstream format are fewer than that. As I've admitted before, I'm not convinced that I have many good words. Sure, I write a profound thing here or there, but much of what I've turned this website into is a mental vomit arena. I throw up some of the things I'm thinking about, far too often switching into a quasi-journal mode in which I document recent events. And though I try to make these things as interesting as I can, they're always as "interesting as I can but still have it be only the first draft, 'cuz I ain't rewriting this" kind of essays. Having gone through, at least perfunctorily, the entirety of my essay writing career--going all the way back to my first essay on Metal Gear Solid 2 on the eve of the release of Metal Gear Solid 4 in 2008 (ten years, yo)--I can comfortably assert that what isn't trite is likely supercilious and what isn't that is worse than I thought it was. It's me being harder on myself than might be necessary, with the occasional acquiescence that I've written a good piece here or there (though none springs to mind at the moment). In a lot of ways, the best part about this writing is that it's keeping me writing. There's a mechanical side to it that I think is useful. And, since I often have a lot on my mind, it's the place where I can think best, albeit not always the clearest. And now I'm at the point--again, having recognized how much rewriting I have to do if I want to get any of my books off of the ground--where I think these essays are doing more harm to my writing prospects than good. That isn't to say that these are bad to write or that I won't do them anymore. Instead, I think I may need to redirect this nightly work ethic into fifteen minutes of editing. I'm not convinced I should do this. With the summer so close I can taste it (graduation is this Friday at my school, and I only have two days of training next week), this might be premature. I could, conceivably, write in the morning right when I get up, do some exercise (hahaha, lies to myself are the funniest lies), eat, read, spend some time with the kids, and then, in the evenings, before I plunk myself down to play Overwatch, I have to edit. That could be a successful recipe for many of the days this summer. But I don't know if I'm going to obsess over writing my essays every single day as much. I don't want to skip out on office time--in fact, after having done this for almost 20 months straight, I don't think it would be good for me to break that habit of daily writing/rewriting. I don't know. I'm still mulling it over. I've noticed a distinct lack in quality of thought and writing here in the past few weeks. That could have to do with the fact that I'm always out of sorts with the end of the school year (which definitely felt rushed this year; I don't feel like I got to say my goodbyes the way I normally do). I have a small but supportive group of readers who, for whatever reason, like to read what I'm thinking, and I'd like to maintain a…consistency, I guess, for them. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe I'll move away from the daily essays. Maybe I won't. Just thinking out loud, here. Despite earlier posts insisting that I was finally through my roadblocks on writing, I have to admit that I'm only now on to something that feels like it has potential. This relates to my post in April where I mentioned that I'd come up with a new idea for a direct sequel to War Golems. After only a small amount of trepidation and concern over my idea (and much combing through The Anatomy of Story) did I decide to indeed drop the then-current work in progress and pursue War Golems II.
As I mentioned in the previous post, it's about the daughter of the main character in War Golems, who gets wrapped up in the next big conflict. I want to talk about generational issues as they pertained to the Great War and the world it formed. I'm curious to see how Cori (the main character) reacts to the idea of seeing the world burn with war again, to see how her stories to her daughter are misunderstood, to watch the next generation try to make sense out of additional conflict. My biggest concerns about the story, though, have to do with the source material. I had some wiggle room, I felt, in writing War Golems because I knew that comparatively fewer people know much about World War I, and the areas where I could fudge it were known to me. I have enough knowledge about individual experiences in World War I that I could use them as starting points for the experiences of the characters in WG. The sequel, though? I know a bit about World War II. I've read a couple of books--okay, maybe more than just "a couple"--and I've watched some documentaries. Hecks, I took six weeks to walk my students through World War II this school year. But my understanding of that conflict is…different. There's a gap, a distance, I think, that makes it harder for me to understand. And here's the weird part: Because we have clear definitions of good and evil in that conflict, I have a harder time working with it. In other words, with such clear villains as Hirohito or Hitler, with such horrendous consequences of these men's decisions, it should be a clear story. It's not. This isn't a World War II post, so I'm not going into the difficulties I have with the war. Instead, it's that ambiguity that I feel--maybe even ambivalence?--that makes writing a sequel to a quasi-World War I novel so difficult. For me, the take away from the Great War (among others) is that both sides went through a horrible experience, and though the Germans lost, they weren't necessarily "the bad guys". And that allows me to have more sympathy and compassion for their plight. World War II doesn't give me that, and, as a result, I'm left with this ambiguity, which in turn affects my conception of WGII. In order to help break away from my own conflicted feelings, I pushed the setting of WGII into an island nation, emulating more of the Pacific Theater. This, I think, was a good move, as it gives me a lot of new locations to bring out, and provide a texture difference between the two books. Mom served in the "European" Theater, daughter serves in the "Pacific". If nothing else, it will keep me from repeating the similar descriptions that I think I'd happen across if I did it any other way. I'm also finding myself a bit overwhelmed with just how much continuity I have to worry about. While I have the plus of having not worked on War Golems at all save the reading of it--and, with that, a freedom to tweak the first novel to better fit the ideas of the sequel--it also means that there are so many tweaks and changes that I have to worry about as I'm going through a revision process. My goal with this book is that it be about the same length as the predecessor--about 88,000 words. Maybe as many as 90,000. Once I have both of them written, I'll essentially have a 180,000 word novel, give or take, to work through. Yes, they're technically different books, but, because of the editing (read: complete and utter lack of editing) I've done on War Golems, I essentially will have two good-sized novels that need my attention. Add to that the fact I haven't finished my edit of Ash and Fire, and I'm looking at over 250,000 words that I will (potentially) have to edit if I want to get anywhere in my submission process (as I've given up on the older things I've written, at this point). And maybe that's part of why I've been having so many false starts with getting another novel written. I slammed out 50,000 words during last November's NaNoWriMo, yeah, but other than that, I haven't really written anything consistently since June 2017. That's the longest drought I've been through in…well, years, probably. By this point, it's clear to me that writing novels is something I am programmed to do. But once it comes to the idea of rewriting novels…well, that's not so easy. I personally think that part of the reason I haven't settled on anything is because I haven't actually "finished" War Golems or Ash and Fire. I think, because I haven't edited them and completed that last bit of the process (heh: "last bit"), I haven't been able to purge them from my system. With them still "there", as it were, I can't move on the way I want to. So how does this pertain to War Golems II? Well, I'm not sure. Maybe, if the two books are really one in my head--that is, I'm working on them in a way that makes them consistent and continuous--then I can trick myself into thinking that I'm really writing something from before. No need to be fussy. Or maybe I'm deluding myself and I'm headed to catastrophe. I guess we'll find out. |
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