between-the-alchemist-and-god

[between-the-alchemist-and-god]

You don’t need to say “She was sad.” Show me the untouched coffee gone cold. The half-written text that never gets sent. The way she laughs at a joke and then immediately looks away. People don’t announce their emotions, they live them, they try to hide them, they pretend they’re fine when they’re not. Make your readers feel it between the words.

[between-the-alchemist-and-god]

Hey. Don't cry. Weird teenage girl somewhere out there reading Frankenstein for the first time. Ok?

[between-the-alchemist-and-god]

Fandom has ruined me I thought this meant the 1862 novel Les Misérables by French author Victor Hugo with over 1,400 pages of content... hence, The Brick

You have a brick. It looks like a brick. It feels like a brick. Yet, over the past few days, people have been desperately trying to buy or steal the brick from you. You're starting to feel scared.

[between-the-alchemist-and-god]

You’ll rewrite it later anyway, so stop staring at the blank page like it owes you money. Just start.

[between-the-alchemist-and-god]

"it's concerning if university students are genuinely struggling to read full adult-level books for class" and "don't overstate the reporting of a single news article" and "if this shift is genuinely real, it's reflective of broad curriculum changes in lower education levels, probably at least in part due to remote schooling during COVID, and doesn't mean the new generation is being willfully Stupid and Vapid" and "when reading for personal pleasure people should read whatever they like without shame" and "reading from a broad variety of genres, styles, and authorial backgrounds will improve your understanding of both literature and the real world" and "actively mocking people for their tastes in books does not encourage them to become more adventurous you're just being mean" and also "but seriously adult books are not just boringly pretentious nothingburgers padded with pointless sex scenes, and claiming they are just shows how little you've read" all can and should co-exist.

[between-the-alchemist-and-god]

Haha I did a thing... don't ask why, this book possessed me a bit ago and I finally got around to proofreading it. Hope someone finds it entertaining like I did

[between-the-alchemist-and-god]

Appearing at the start of autumn like some sort of cold weather spirit who can only be seen when the air tastes slightly like ice and diesel

Career goals

[between-the-alchemist-and-god]

Been writing a lot of poetry recently. Who knew I was a poet

...

no I did. I really did, fiction is just a pastime. I think I want to retire in poetry like some isolated cabin retreat to live out the rest of my days the best I can before the inevitable

If you're wondering (and I know you aren't), no I am not old enough to retire yet, and absolutely this is the very serious Life Plan I have set for myself. at least. part of it

[between-the-alchemist-and-god]

Noticed I don't read a lot of nonfiction about a month ago

One of my favorite books - if not Favorite Book - is The End of Everything (Astrophysical Speaking) by Dr. Katie Mack, but I'm not exaggerating when I say that was the only nonfiction book on my bookshelf for a while, sans some old textbooks/photography books

So anyway I went out and invested in quite a few non-fiction books for a change. We'll see how it goes. I am evolving

[between-the-alchemist-and-god]

life's too short to write for an imaginary critic that you fear will hate what you wrote

[between-the-alchemist-and-god]

My mom after I infodumped to her about Frankenstein: He was 19?!?! That changes everything!!

Me: Right?!?!?!?!

[between-the-alchemist-and-god]

This is what happens in the lathe of heaven but with the turtles

[between-the-alchemist-and-god]

So, okay, fun fact. When I was a freshman in high school… let me preface by saying my dad sent me to a private school and, like a bad organ transplant, it didn’t take. I was miserable, the student body hated me, I hated them, it was awful.

Okay, so, freshman year, I’m deep in my “everything sucks and I’m stuck with these assholes” mentality. My English teacher was a notorious hard-ass, let’s call him Mr. Hargrove. He was the guy every student prayed they didn’t get. And, on top of ALL OF THE SHIT I WAS ALREADY DEALING WITH, I had him for English.

One of the laborious assignments he gave us was to keep a daily journal. Daily! Not monthly or weekly. Fucking daily. Handwritten. And we had to turn it in every quarter and he fucking graded us. He graded us on a fucking journal.

All of my classmates wrote shit like what they did that day or whatever. But, I did not. No, sir. I decided to give the ol’ middle finger to the assignment and do my own shit.

So, for my daily journal entries, over the course of an entire year, I wrote a serialized story about a horde of man-eating slugs that invaded a small mining town. It was graphic, it was ridiculous, it was an epic feat of rebellion.

And Mr. Hargrove loved it.

It wasn’t just the journal. Every assignment he gave us, I tried to shit all over it. Every reading assignment, everyone gushed about how good it was, but I always had a negative take. Every writing assignment, people wrote boring prose, but I wrote cheesy limericks or pulp horror stories.

Then, one day, he read one of my essays to the class as an example of good writing. When a fellow student asked who wrote it, he said, “Some pipsqueak.”

And that’s when I had a revelation. He wanted to fight. And since all the other students were trying to kiss his ass, I was his only challenger.

Mr. Hargrove and I went head-to-head on every assignment, every conversation, every fucking thing. And he ate it up. And so did I.

One day, he read us a column from the Washington Post and asked the class what was wrong with it. Everyone chimed in with their dumbass takes, but I was the one who landed on Mr. Hargrove’s complaint: The reporter had BRAZENLY added the suffix “ize” to a verb.

That night I wrote a jokey letter to the reporter calling him out on the offense in which I added “ize” to every single verb. I gave it to Mr. Hargrove, who by then had become a friendly adversary, for a chuckle and he SENT IT TO THE REPORTER.

And, people… The reporter wrote back. And he said I was an exceptional student. Mr. Hargrove and I had a giggle about that because we both knew I was just being an asshole, but he and the reporter acknowledged I had a point.

And that was it. That was the moment. Not THAT EXACT moment, but that year with Mr. Hargrove taught me I had a knack for writing. And that knack was based in saying “fuck you” to authority. (The irony that someone in a position of authority helped me realize that is not lost on me.)

So, I can say without qualification that Mr. Hargrove is the reason I am now a professional writer. Yes, I do it for a living. And most of my stuff takes authorities of one kind or another to task.

Mr. Hargrove showed me my dissent was valid, my rebellion was righteous, and that killer slugs could bring a city to its knees. Someone just needs to write it.

[between-the-alchemist-and-god]

- Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven 

[between-the-alchemist-and-god]

Hey. Hey y'all guess what? Guess what's happened? Bet you can't

You know. I don't really have a set strategy for creating characters. I just kinda. Write them based on what vibes I want from them and give certain details like mannerisms or speech patterns that differentiate them as a character before I develop them more through the story.

And this would work just fine 100% of the time except for the 98% of the time where I end up pulling from a part of myself for their mannerisms and they just become autistic

So now my character creation process has just become:

Me: *gives character identifying trait*

Character: *becomes autistic*

Me: *screaming*

Repeat.

[between-the-alchemist-and-god]

“After all, [the world] is on my side. That is, I’m a part of it. Not separate from it. I walk on the ground and the ground’s walked on by me, I breathe the air and change it, I am entirely interconnected with the world.”

— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven

[between-the-alchemist-and-god]

i love the strange reality of being a human person with a human brain. one time someone said something to me in a foreign language (japanese, which i do not speak) and i automatically responded in a different foreign language (spanish, which i do not speak well) and then we both said "what?" in english, an experience made more surreal by the fact that everyone around us was speaking loudly in canadian french (as this occurred in Quebec)