#lesson is Keep Making Purposeless Objects Forever

[unopenablebox]

🌸 loves the cowl i made them 😊

[magnus-sm-writes]

Lessons in Humanity Camp NaNo 2020 Wrap-Up

I’ve finished Lessons in Humanity from a Future Physicist and y’all know what that means! Yes, it’s time for one of those huge, all-inclusive posts about my WIP that exactly no one asks for! (And the crowd groans at the migraine-inducing thought of another one!)

(Check out my WIP intro and WIP page for Lessons in Humanity if you’re interested in learning more about the story!)

A Brief History

Lessons in Humanity began as an avenue for me to talk about my depression and anxiety as a 12-year-old. Basically, I just made these characters’ lives miserable, and then I got super attached to the characters and thought man, they deserve an actual narrative. And thus, six years later, I’m projecting my fear of going off to college on my own and my mental illnesses onto these characters. I like to say that, as I have matured, so has this story. This book holds a piece of my soul help.

The Purpose of the Rewrite

This particular pass-though was more about changing a couple things in Lessons in Humanity than fine-tuning things like most of my novel rewrites. There were a couple big things I edited, including the setting and tweaking some of the subplots. (I feel like there are still issues with the middle and a couple stylistic problems with the prose in places, but I’ll fix those at a later point.)

What I’ve Learnt

This runthrough of Lessons in Humanity has made me realize that I am good at writing complex dialogue between these specific characters. Because Lessons in Humanity used to be from Kam’s perspective, I was sort of blinded from the nuance in my own story (Kam has very little situational awareness/ability to read subtext). But this re-write has made me realize: these characters are very nuanced and have a lot of complex moments between them. And the character dynamics are just as complex as the dialogue. It turns out that I am better at writing subtext than I thought I was, which is awesome!

Highlights!

It was difficult to find non-spoilery highlights, but these are some parts I take particular pride in. 

Vic likes to go on late-night drives all the time. Sometimes, he would take Gerard and Kam with him, when they weren’t busy. In the wintertime, as Vic drove them outside of Dayton, the snowflakes would catch in the headlights, making it look like they were heading through space at warp drive instead of down 70  in the general direction of Columbus. They were purposeless drives, through the rain or snow or clear nights, stars more visible the further they got from their city, while Vic played whatever music he wanted. Sometimes they would talk, other times they wouldn’t.

Zach doesn’t go on purposeless drives the same way that Vic likes to. He’s more worried about gas, about gas prices, about gas mileage, always so worried about something. 

Kam likes that worry. Zach without his anxieties wouldn’t be Zach at all. Ruth once said it’s the imperfections that make people worthwhile when defending a character in a book she’d read. Zach, without every imperfection of his-- without his stutter, without his uncertainties, without his need to cling to other people-- would not be worthwhile.

For the rest of the ride home, Kam stares at the picture. They’re in their graduation caps, smiling so hard it looks like they’ll be stuck like that forever. Zach has spent that entire week talking about nothing but the future, beautiful in its hypothetical as anything. He’d go to college and live in a studio apartment with his love, doing what he loves, for the rest of his life. He and Kam talked about NASA internships in Florida, in Texas-- wherever they could get them together-- with the same giddiness they talked about what college to go to and their favorite Star Wars characters. Their senior year was full of dreams and hard work.

Zach was still in love with Chai. Kam was still okay. They were living at their homes. A lot has changed since then. Kam shudders at that thought, but then he looks at Zach, at how he’s sneaking glances at Kam, checking out how he likes the playlist, and there’s that feeling again, the sweaty-palmed, gravitational pull, and he thinks, I think I can be okay with this. 

Zach closes his eyes. His face is wet from crying, raw from rubbing at it, red all over. Even then, even after what’s happened, he still looks almost beautiful. There’s something about the lighting in an art museum that makes everything look like art, even raw emotion. It rounds out like the patheticness of breaking down in public into something artful. Zach doesn’t look anything like a model, but he does look like art.

Stars will continue to form and break, making black holes and neutron stars and supernovas. The Earth will continue to orbit the Sun, the Moon will continue to orbit the Earth. Life will continue. 

Why? Kam wants to ask. It’s a question he’s been acquainted with ever since he was young. Why?, he would ask, pointing to objects as a child. Why?, he would ask, when he learned the simple sciences of the universe and wanted to understand how exactly they worked. Why?, he would ask, when someone would tell him not to do something that made sense to him. 

And the Jams

The Lessons in Humanity playlist is pretty lit and I recommend it.

What Comes Next? 

I’m likely going to work on either He’s Like An Ocean or Midway Through Summer’s Bullshit, which are two works I highly highly recommend keeping up on!

Who’s Interested?

@aelenko​ & @lrosesc​! (You can always ask to be added to/subtracted from the taglist!)