I feel so factually sad. It is alive and everywhere as skin.

fucking annoying

Some really great examples of innovative chaptering, even something as simple as inverting a reader's expectations (starting with ch. 47 on p. 289 with the numbers counting down from there, as in Chuck Palahniuk’s SURVIVOR) can give us other pathways towards telling a story well.

I love this piece, Amy! I'm working with an unnamed narrator in my novel too, and I appreciate the question you're asking: "When the voice telling the story does not give you their own name, what else are they holding back?"

And yes—are there ways in which an unnamed "I" becomes a kind of "you"?

a shark! and yes, I wrote shortform recently and it felt like a luxurious bath: I could tinker to my heart's content :)

So to ensure I'm not toying around with earlier chapters, I've got a list of "scenes to write" in a separate doc, and I'm just gonna tackle them one at a time.

Then I'll frankenstien and finesse as a treat.

"What if we widen our understanding of greatness?

Life is not narrow and vertical, it doesn’t just go up or down.

Life is horizontal, unfolding, sprawling, vast. We don’t build life like a skyscraper."

“Don’t talk about the moon, I remind myself. Ask everyone how _their_ day was.”

Reminds me of this eternal Ted Chiang banger-