Day: June 14, 2025

1350 wasn’t enough for a chapter. I spent hours today trying to get that chapter to become what it is meant to be–a critical moment in the novel where multiple character arcs experience a turning point and lead us headlong into the next, and most dangerous, part of the narrative.

No, I wasn’t successful.

At this rate I will never finish this revision. One chapter a week is hot garbage. I need to punch through tomorrow and get right. The clock is ticking down to oblivion. At any rate, this is on my mind. I don’t want it to consume all of my life and energy, so I decided to dig at my hindbrain by offering you all…

Some Thoughts:

1. Been off youtube for a while. Probably a good thing. However, the moment I’m back home with the 23 year old, I realize that youtube is the way for young people. They are about it in a way they are not about regular tv. This leads me to posit that regualar TV is dead. Not dying, dead. The way radio is dead. Sure, there are podcasts, DLs, etc. Sure, people still listen, but it isn’t what it was. Neither is TV.
2. Government stuff is wild right now. As I type there are protests across the country on a day where 4 Minnesota politicians were the subject of an attempted assassination and two died. Meanwhile Trump is hosting a military parade… for his birthday. We are entering a space where political protest is being viewed as anti-American and protesting a particular government is codified as anti-semetic. End of times stuff. According to Eschatology, that is exactly what they want…

I spent the day working on a chapter only to stop it at a natural break, publish that part as the chapter and live to write another day. This is a smaller chapter now, maybe 1350 words, or three pages. Could be that it gets lumped back in with another in edit. Three pages is a willfully short chapter. It stands as the shortest in the book, and it took me a week to write it. If it does get lopped back in with the rest of that scene, I’ll need to do edits to parse what was a solid scene break moment back into the fold.

Writing is hard work. I’m loving the work. It is possibly the only job I’ve loved this much. I didn’t love the work of football this much. I don’t love the work of teaching this much. I am doing what I love and what I am meant to do with this life. I am telling the stories, though not always the stories I need to tell. That comes later. That comes with having some modicum of success and (or) as part of the MFA process. Even the Justice Engine is not the only story I need to tell. I have more. I continue to believe the words will come easier when I get in better shape, because my physical form and my energy levels are tied to my mental process. I need more of a healthy form to let the brain get all that good healthy blood.

In the meanwhile, I’m staggering through some of these chapters in search of a way to the end of this novel. I want it to be a good one, and that means digging deeper into these characters and conflicts in iconic scenes. The stuff that holds those scenes together isn’t going quite as well, but I feel like I am making progress.

Some Thoughts:

1. NBA Finals. I know I should care. I don’t, really. I’m still mad at Dolan for being a dumb ass.