As the prophets say, life is like a hurricane. Between deadlines and Incipient Move and such, I have not even had time to tell myself, ah, today I will write a post of depth and wit and verve and wisdom. But updates are in order, so let dates be upped.
Last week I finished the line edit pass on Wicked Problems, a final round of sentence-level tweaks and adjustments, streamlining and darling-murder. Now the manuscript goes to the copy editor, from which it will return, by ancient custom, at the least opportune moment.
When I say “darling-murder,” I perhaps owe an explanation.
“Kill your darlings” is, like most writing advice, a koan, or a mystic saying, or the kind of riddle that (if you’ve done your work) will have your readers face-palming when you reveal the true answer in the final act. Some people hear it and think, “if I like this line, I should destroy it,” a cursed sentiment. When I think about this advice, I think it means: if a phrase or passage is only there because it makes you feel clever—if it does not fit with the voice, the dramatic situation, the ‘implied author’ of the text, the character, if it advances nothing, reveals nothing, heightens nothing, sparks no joy or sorrow in the reader—then, consider cutting it, or—this is the important bit—set it free to do more. Give your little dears, your darling sweets, the strength they need, the beauty and wonder and terror, the pride of place on the page to scorn any implication that they are here for mean indulgence. Make them self-evident.
Or at least try.
I just finished a first draft of a short story, written on a Smith-Corona 2500 inherited from my grandparents. When I turn on The Machine, it hums like laser artillery. When I type a letter I feel like I am hammering the eggshell of the sky.
Imagine what a typo feels like, then.
A writer at the page faces two enemies. (In fact there are many enemies but now let’s mention two.) One bears a standard which reads “Writing is hard.” One bears a standard which reads, “Writing is easy.” The first chases the writer from the page, daunts their imagination, cackles at indecision and imperfection. The second scorns effort, depth, care, consideration, craftsmanship, worth. Sometimes we are losing to the first enemy, and need words to flow effortlessly onto the page. Sometimes we are losing to the second, and need to know that each letter we have written, we will have written forever.
Even the typos.
I liked this essay by Denisse Myrick, hosted on Emily Oster’s ParentData newsletter, about parenting self-identity. Parenting has weirded my identity and my relationship to it in ways I see reflected in Myrick’s piece. Certain kinds of nerdery, depths of obsessive work and focus and self-dissolution, are impossible now, because I have someone else I need to be, some other role I need to dissolve into come preschool pickup time. I used to enjoy meeting friends in their obsessions, disappearing down new rabbit holes; I used to love being on the road several weeks in a row, and those end-of-project days when I went nova-round and wrote ‘til midnight and collapse. I love being a parent; it’s just I also loved who I was before, and I’m not quite that person now.
I’m still a nerd, though. Dad-nerd.
Speaking of: I’m slowly picking my way through 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, and also at Bo Bolander’s insistence, Disco Elysium. Captivating gaming experiences in very different ways, they share a mechanic, or a foundational concept, that I don’t remember seeing before: thoughts and beliefs as inventory.
In Disco, your “character” is composed of personality elements in tension—a multitude of internal monologues, an inner psychic family—and while you have a conventional inventory in the form of clothes and shoes and things like that, you also have an inventory of thoughts, like Communism (sort of) or Home, which grow and change as the game proceeds and your character reflects upon them.
The adventure game segments in 13 Sentinels are more conventional point-and-click fare, but your inventory, for the most part, still consists of concepts. You’re combining ideas, or trying out your ideas in different sequence on different characters, to solve puzzles. This means you can have an “adventure game puzzle” in which the external action is “your character stands on a bridge, watching the sunset,” while undergoing an epiphany—resulting from gameplay, as you combine their thoughts. The game doesn’t push the edges of this idea (most of the ‘puzzles’ are easy) but what’s there is striking, and I’d love to see something take the metaphor further. What would it be in tabletop? Skills exist and advance, of course, but I don’t remember seeing someone acquire, say, +3 Masterwork Communism, in a game. Ideas as tradable, acquirable, as constituent factors of identity. More room for pondering.
As the twitter-tower totters, I’ve set up a bluesky account; the handle’s just maxgladstone, if you’re interested in finding me over there. Who knows where we’ll all end up, but it’s nice to have the account made, at least.
And now I’m off. Take it easy, friends. Take care of one another.
Thanks for the update, love to hear it as always :)
On killing your darlings, I have been really enjoying wasting a little time watching Drawfee, if you get into it, one of the artists (Julia) is famous for mercilessly deleting her art halfway through and starting over in a way that's been... kind of inspiring to me, to be honest.
On RPGs, I *love* the idea of equipping a +3 Communism. Will have to ponder this one...