July 14, 2025

I updated my site two months ago. Once again, it was supposed to be earlier than that. Last time, I had the legitimate excuse that I was away brute force learning CSS. Now I have another reason.

You see, I’m trying to write a book.

I want to be a writer.

When you’re a little kid in the early ‘90s, it’s easy to say, “Imma be a writer” when asked, “What Will You Do When You Grow Up?” This is especially true when the adults always tell you what a gifted writer you are. It’s even easier when all the kids around you actually read.

Every day, you are told your adult authoring self will make a bajillion dollars, with an added emphasis on, “…and help me retire, haw haw!” You look around at all the kids actually reading books, thinking to yourself, “One day, I’ll be the next R.L. Stine, Christopher Pike, Stephen King, or Roald Dahl.

The dream continues. You are admitted into college, despite having a documented learning disability in math. You sit down with this guy they call The Advisor for the first time. He asks you, “What Will You Do When You Grow Up?” Because you are eighteen, were raised upper-middle class, and experienced life’s harsh realities by reading The Boxcar Children, you reply, “Imma be a writer.” Instead of discouraging you, The Advisor explains that writers benefit from majoring in English. As an added bonus, English majors don’t have to take math classes.

You declare English as your major, knowing now the moment you finish walking across that stage, you will finish that book. The only reason you haven’t rocketed into writing superstardom by now, like that kid Christopher Paolini, is because you didn’t have a BA in English to grant you those skills.

While you spend the next four years training to be an awesome writer, you take cues from accomplished masters of the craft. For instance, you learn how to write cute, ironic, sharp, oftentimes hilarious dialogue from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly season sets. You internalize all the important rules, or ‘principles,’ from the likes of Syd Field or Robert McKee. You peruse books with titles like How to Write and Get it Publi$hed. Your characters will have golden hair when they transform. Or, if that’s copying too much, they will dispense street smart life lessons to a younger generation while possessing extraordinary fighting abilities—like Great Teacher Onizuka.

You’ve got this, kid. And there’s plenty of room for you to get even better. As those crucial four years come to a close, you don’t have to finish any pesky internships. You aren’t forced to write an annoying thirty page Senior Thesis. Hell, you don’t even have to finish that many of the assigned readings. Here, let’s look at these real quick, so you can finish your reflection essays. William Faulkner? He must hate his audience, since this stream-of-consciousness stuff is impossible to comprehend on purpose. Flannery O'Connor? She must hate her characters, since God always kills them in her stories. Alright, then! Time to chug a few Red Bulls and stay up all night typing these papers.

As it is with the characters in our stories, so, too, do our stories end in real life. Maybe with all these burning dreams driving you forward, you’ll graduate with a 2.6 GPA. Maybe you’ll even get a grant-funded job as an English support instructor that you keep for almost twenty years, until the current sitting President destroys the Department of Education and ehh err I don’t like hurting Republicans’ feelings on here.

Maybe you’ll also learn that today’s kids don’t read anymore. In fact, the illiteracy rate in your country of birthright citizenship climbs higher every year. Because the kids don’t read, there is a likelihood they will grow into adults who also do not read.

And as a possibly soon-to-be-former English tutor, writing in the second person (you/your) hurts a lot. Thus, I will bring our hypothetical tale to a close.

So, yes. I am writing a book. Again. For real this time. As for what the plot is, in case you’re curious, I cannot tell you. Let’s say, in the off-chance I don’t complete a first draft—out of the question, since I will for sure do it—I do not want to publish promises I can’t keep. It’s difficult to say how many times I posted plot synopses on Facebook for my friends and family to comment on. Meaning, it’s difficult to say. It’s embarrassing.

Also, I can’t summarize the plot because the book doesn’t have one yet. It has a character, but no plot. This is an issue that keeps draining my morale, not unlike one of Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s bloodsuckers.

The book will happen if and when it happens. It might not have car chases, explosions, or lizard-like changeling supervillains who lose their tails in Genki Dama explosions. Maybe it will. I’m just saying…I’m trying. At the end of the day, that’s all we can do.

What else?

Oh, yes, site updates. After all, I didn’t log back in to shamelessly self-promote. During book writing breaks, I played through the first Fallout, and I completed a couple back-to-back replays of Fallout: New Vegas. In addition, I polished up and finished my Resident Evil 4 (2023) remake review.