{
"version": "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1",
"title": "JeremyGreenawalt.com",
"home_page_url": "https://jeremygreenawalt.com/",
"feed_url": "https://jeremygreenawalt.com//feed/index.json",
"description": "This is the personal site for Jeremy Greenawalt. That's it.",
"icon": "https://jeremygreenawalt.com/assets/images/icon_dark.png",
"items": [
{
"id": "4573",
"url": "https://jeremygreenawalt.com/archive/no-necromancers-please",
"title": "No Necromancers, Please",
"content_html": "" <p>This is a story about online dating, necromancy, and other things that sound fun until you have to attempt them.<\/p> <hr class=\"graphic-separator default\" \/> <p>Chad glanced at the mirror as he grabbed another bucket. He was equal parts excited and nervous about Jennifer coming over that night. They had met through one of the miscellaneous dating apps on his phone just four weeks ago, but he already thought she might be the one. The two of them just clicked in chat. They had even met for coffee a couple of times, and he could tell she felt the chemistry.<\/p>\n<p>Tonight could be a milestone, though. After Jennifer came over, he would finally show her his avocation \u2014 his passion.<\/p>\n<p>He had just finished mopping up the latest spill when Chad heard her knock at the door. He remembered telling her she wouldn\u2019t need to knock because the raven would alert him. Chad swept his eyes around the room, looking for the cursed bird, before deciding that was a problem he could deal with later.<\/p>\n<p>After another quick visual inspection of his room, Chad opened the door and took in the vision before him. In her black tank top, black jeans, and shiny Docs, Jennifer was his goth princess. He loved the way her jet black hair framed her face, and he envied the perfectly normal symmetry of her eyes.<\/p>\n<p>After a pregnant pause, Chad remembered his practiced manners, bowed dramatically, and invited her into his lair. His landlord insisted on calling it an economy studio, of course. Chad swung his arm around the room until he felt the gesture tug his Joy Division shirt high above his black jeans. He immediately dropped his arm as naturally as he could manage. That had not happened when he rehearsed it earlier.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJennifer, I have invited you here this evening to show you my passion.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy passion for necromancy!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNecromancy is my big secret, you could say.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou mentioned it when we first texted.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI trusted you that much, dear lady.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was also in your profile.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRight\u2026 I should probably\u2026 change\u2026 that\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s okay, Chad. I like you, and you said you wanted to become a full-time necromancer. I support you, and I\u2019m excited to see your\u2026 passion.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A genuine smile spread across Jennifer\u2019s face and put Chad at ease until the raven finally made its entrance. His broken wings made it impossible to fly \u2014 a mistake Chad had learned from \u2014 and the bird hopped across vinyl flooring on the two springs that served as makeshift legs.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWokka! Wokka!\u201d The raven screamed a greeting at Jennifer\u2019s left foot.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh! He\u2019s\u2026 uh\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve gotten better! He was an early experiment.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo, he was dead?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes, and now he\u2019s not. Mostly. It\u2019s not like they write instructions for necromancy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDon\u2019t they?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI mean, they do, but there\u2019s a lot of interpretation involved. That\u2019s what makes it both art and the forbidden science.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI thought that was alchem\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAlso necromancy!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOf course. I\u2019m sure I\u2019ve heard that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWould you like to see some of my latest work? Like a human?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAbsolutely, Chad!\u201d Jennifer consciously said his name, knowing it would remind him they had been talking for a while, and he didn\u2019t need to be nervous. \u201cI know we all started somewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Jennifer tried not to look at the bird pecking at her foot, and Chad rushed to the closet.<\/p>\n<p>He loved how Jennifer, his goth queen, knew just how to encourage him without even trying.<\/p>\n<p>With careful prods and pokes, he guided Frankie into the living\/bedroom. Frankie\u2019s eyes constantly moved in various, disparate directions as he moved. With faltering steps, he approached the young Jennifer in the center of the room. Two of his fingers fell quietly on the fibers of a shag rug as he walked.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEggs?\u201d He growled in a vaguely British clip.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m sorry?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Chad the Amateur Necromancer rushed in front of Frankie, using a hand to calm his creation and avoid an overreaction to the sudden movement.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m training him to be my butler! He was dead a little longer than I\u2019d been led to believe, of course.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy does his nose do that?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s actually \u2014 have you ever tried to make a model airplane without all the \u2014 never mind. Anyway, he can make eggs.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo he can cook?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes!\u201d Chad felt himself practically glowing with pride. She was finally seeing his potential and how he was going to escape his dead-end job.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCan I get some scrambled eggs?\u201d Jennifer smiled at the pair like a proud, if slightly patronizing, parent.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh\u2026 no.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI mean, that\u2019s really eggs and milk, and there\u2019s the whisking\u2026 he can make over easy, though, if I crack the eggs into the pan.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI see.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Chad stared into Jennifer\u2019s symmetrical eyes and waited for her next words of encouragement.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cChad, I think you\u2019re really nice and kind and smart\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThank you! I knew you would see\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut you\u2019re an accountant, right?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m actually a controller, but that\u2019s just my day\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd you\u2019re good at that?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI mean, I\u2019m successful. I make mid-six figures.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh, wow! Because\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNecromancy is expensive.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOf course it is.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Jennifer found her eyes moving around the small room, looking for rare artifacts or relics. Instead, she saw a broken bird and a zombie with a decreasing number of fingers. Chad\u2019s pained expression was not helping put her at ease.<\/p>\n<p>Part of her wanted to save Chad. She wanted to explain how competitive the world of necromancy had become. She wanted to tell him about her own dabbling, which had produced a fully functioning army of the dead, before she realized it would only ever be a hobby.<\/p>\n<p>Ultimately, she knew it wouldn\u2019t matter. This wasn\u2019t her first Chad. Jennifer politely told Chad that his necromancy was almost too good, and she didn\u2019t think she could help parent all his \u201cexperiments\u201d at this point in her life. Before he could object, she waved to one of Frankie\u2019s eyes, wished Chad luck, and hurried down the stairs to her car.<\/p>\n<p>Before leaving, she opened the app to delete her match with Chad and update her profile: \u201cNo necromancers, please.\u201d<\/p>\n\n <hr class=\"graphic-separator default\" \/> <p>I don\u2019t always have an origin story for my ideas, but this has one. I\u2019ve been dating (online), and invariably we end up talking about my writing. I elaborate on how much I love it, and how I\u2019d love to do it all the time. Then, they ask to see some of my stuff, and I send over a few links with a nervousness that should be saved for more important things. They always say nice things, but I did start to wonder what would happen if, after all the buildup, they found out I was just really, truly awful at my chosen hobby. I joked about this with my friends, and then we thought it would be funnier if I had picked a hobby with very little margin for error, or something that really shouldn\u2019t be a hobby at all.<\/p>"",
"date_published": "2023-10-17T21:14:00-05:00",
"date_modified": "2023-10-17T21:25:13-05:00",
"author": {
"name": "jeremy"
}
}, {
"id": "4488",
"url": "https://jeremygreenawalt.com/archive/too-many-words-about-fountain-pens",
"title": "Too Many Words About Fountain Pens",
"content_html": "" <p>It's been almost a year since I've updated my site, but I've been writing regularly. During that time, I have been working on two novels. I\u2019ve started a half-dozen new short stories. I have even started work on publishing a children\u2019s book. All of those are rife with topics to talk about. Not today, though. Today, we\u2019re going to talk about pens.<\/p>\n<p>Specifically, we will discuss fountain pens because they\u2019re more fiddly and personal to me than other pens. In an effort to take a break from working on my novels, I will tell you all about my favorite fountains and their accessories. First, I will talk about why I use and love fountain pens because that\u2019s way more interesting.<\/p>\n<p>Writing is hard. Sometimes writing is very hard. Even when the output is hard, though, I try to enjoy the process. Ah, but there\u2019s the rub. So much of the process is outside my control; mood, inspiration, and distractions are things I try to control \u2014 that I like to believe I control \u2014 but I cannot control. There are things I can control, like my <a href=\"https:\/\/jeremygreenawalt.com\/archive\/my-ipad-pro-is-my-favorite-writing-tool\" title=\"My iPad Pro is My Favorite Writing Tool\">keyboard<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/jeremygreenawalt.com\/archive\/a-short-dissertation-on-mechanical-keyboards\" title=\"A Short Dissertation on Mechanical Keyboards\">hardware<\/a>, and software (future article right there). Those are things I have chosen because they make me happy and, most importantly, they increase my efficiency. Pens are different.<\/p>\n<p>Other than the near bottomless wells of ink, nothing about my fountain pens makes me more efficient. They are slower to write with, require me to slow down even more to avoid ink stains on my hands, need maintenance and inking, and nothing is saved to the cloud or even backed up at all. These are all the things I love about them. I get joy uncapping them, inking them, holding them as I think, and making big loops and small dashes in my rough cursive script. They bring moments of joy with no efficiency gains at all.<\/p>\n<p>Someday, I might write about how they play into my process of outlining and free writing before I get something worth typing. I\u2019m not Neil Gaiman, and I can\u2019t handwrite an entire novel. Still, I reach for my pens as often as possible. I\u2019ll write about it some other day. For now, let\u2019s just accept that they give me joy, and I\u2019ll start talking about some of my favorite pens.<br \/><\/p>\n <hr class=\"graphic-separator default\" \/> <figure class=\"inline-image\">\n <picture>\n <img src=\"\/assets\/site\/inline_images\/_inlineImage\/IMG_4009.jpeg\" title=\"Pilot Vanishing Point\" \/>\n <\/picture>\n <\/figure>\n <h2>Pilot Vanishing Point<\/h2>\n<p>My first holy grail pen, I looked at the click-y fountain pen for over a decade before I finally got a white and black (Stormtrooper) one. With a fine nib, it\u2019s perfect for quick notes. I did quickly realize that putting it in my front pocket risked clicking the nib out and staining the inside of my favorite jeans, but now I know better. Now, it sits on my desk within reach all day, and it\u2019s the first thing I grab for any notes or ideas. Moreover, the whole click mechanism and the ability to keep the nib from drying out is a mechanical marvel that I constantly think about.<br \/><\/p>\n <hr class=\"graphic-separator default\" \/> <figure class=\"inline-image\">\n <picture>\n <img src=\"\/assets\/site\/inline_images\/_inlineImage\/IMG_4008.jpeg\" title=\"Lamy 2000\" \/>\n <\/picture>\n <\/figure>\n <h2>Lamy 2000<\/h2>\n<p>This was another holy grail pen I acquired after a decade. It\u2019s simple in form, but every detail feels perfected. Unchanged since 1966, the mid-century look and feel connects me to history each time I uncap it. It uses a uniquely shaped nib that some don\u2019t like, but I think writes incredibly smooth. The piston filler means I can refill it in minutes with no cleanup. The feeling in the hand is just substantial enough, without ever feeling too large. It\u2019s one of my favorite instruments to write with, and it\u2019s no coincidence that I wrote all my notes for this article using it.<br \/><\/p>\n <hr class=\"graphic-separator default\" \/> <figure class=\"inline-image\">\n <picture>\n <img src=\"\/assets\/site\/inline_images\/_inlineImage\/IMG_4010.jpeg\" title=\"TWSBIs\" \/>\n <\/picture>\n <\/figure>\n <h2>TWSBI Vac 700R (and Mini)<\/h2>\n<p>TWSBI was my first good fountain pen. Not the Vac, but the 580. In fact, that\u2019s the pen I loaned to friends to sway them over to fountain pens. It wrote smoothly, looked interesting with its clear body, and felt great in the hand. Unfortunately, mine got cracked too badly to warrant repair after about a decade (and more than a couple falls on tile or concrete). I waited for a year before I bought the Vac 700R, a vacuum filler I had been looking at for a few years already. This is just a workhorse. It has one of the largest ink reservoirs out there, and you can fill it to the brim with the cool vacuum action. I keep mine filled with an oxblood red ink that looks cool in the pen and on the page (perfect for horror stories).<\/p>\n<p>After owning the big Vac for a while, I got the Mini for daily carry when I leave the house. This pen is pocket-sized, has a large reservoir, and is tough enough to withstand minor accidents. I plan to rotate the ink in it, but I\u2019ve been loving a dark blue for the past few fills.<br \/><\/p>\n <hr class=\"graphic-separator default\" \/> <h2>Lamy Safari<\/h2>\n<p>Technically, this is not a single pen, but a model of which I have owned many. They're affordable ($20-30), available in various colors (from black to earth tones), and write well using cartridges or bottled ink. I\u2019ve given many as gifts. I got myself a mango colored one, filled with bright red ink, just for marking up the first draft of my novel.<br \/><\/p>\n <hr class=\"graphic-separator default\" \/> <h2>Visconti Homo Sapiens or Opera Master<\/h2>\n<p>Okay, this is my bonus pick. It\u2019s also not a single pen, but two lines from Visconti. I don\u2019t own any of them. If the Vanishing Point and Lamy 2000 were my holy grail pens when I first got into fountain pens, these are my \u201cone day I sell a book for a lot of money\u201d pens that seem almost unobtainable. The Homo Sapiens I want are handmade from hardened basaltic lava, and they are blacker than black. The Opera Master is shiny black with swirls of orange and red in the resin. These all write perfectly, and they are functional pieces of art. They cost just a shade under a grand. I\u2019m not getting any of them\u2026 yet.<\/p>"",
"date_published": "2023-08-27T21:40:00-05:00",
"date_modified": "2023-08-28T21:06:31-05:00",
"author": {
"name": "jeremy"
}
}, {
"id": "4335",
"url": "https://jeremygreenawalt.com/archive/the-intervention-or-killing-my-darlings-with-help",
"title": "The Intervention, or Killing My Darlings With Help",
"content_html": "" <blockquote>You need to kill your darlings. Good friends will line them up in front of the firing squad for you.<\/blockquote>\n<p>Having finished the first major rewrite of my novel, I handed it off to my good friends in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.telltaleswriting.com\" title=\"The Telltales\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Telltales<\/a><sup><a href=\"#footnote_1\" class=\"footnote-link\">1<\/a><\/sup>. Working around their own busy schedules, most of them managed to read it, and we scheduled a good ol\u2019 novel critique. I was obviously a bit nervous, having never been through one before. I\u2019ve done design critiques and code reviews, and I\u2019ve run enough of both to see some tears. This was at least after-hours and would involve some drinking to make it feel better. In fact, the opening of a new bottle of Writer\u2019s Tears<sup><a href=\"#footnote_2\" class=\"footnote-link\">2<\/a> <\/sup> was the only thing that made it not feel like an intervention as I sat in the hot seat and my friends gathered around me in a circle.<\/p>\n<p>It was an intervention, though, on behalf of my novel. This was not a feel-good session about how much everyone loved the prose I had slaved over, and it wasn\u2019t a random circle of creative writing students giving out esoteric notes I could easily ignore. This was tough and brutal because every problem or question was completely valid and earned. Faulkner said you need to kill your darlings, but I will add that good friends will line them up in front of the firing squad for you. These are all very good friends. They took my darlings behind the barn and dispatched with them immediately, ala Old Yeller.<\/p>\n<p>So, what\u2019s going to happen, now? Well, I\u2019m rewriting the entire beginning, for sure. I\u2019ve worked out new backstories and arcs for the underdeveloped characters (thankfully, a couple characters were actually fully developed). All of these changes will affect the middle of the book, but I haven\u2019t even gotten there, yet. I can also tell that some of this will change the end of the book, but I won\u2019t even know what\u2019s going to happen again until I get further into it. So, I\u2019m basically rewriting the book, but only because that\u2019s what it deserves. It deserves to be a better book.<\/p>\n<p>After that, I\u2019m sure I\u2019ll have a better draft for my beta readers. Whenever that happens, I\u2019ll be hitting up a wider group of friends, family, and readers to tell me what I got wrong the second time through.<\/p>\n<p>This is exciting. This is building, tearing down, and building over and over again. This is what I do in my free time. This might be some sort of sickness, but I\u2019ve decided to enjoy it and go along for the ride. You can go along for the ride, too, through this documentation of my trials and tribulations. Or you can just wait for me to write more short stories for my son, and I get that. Either way, thanks for reading this while I take a break from that novel for a few minutes.<\/p>"",
"date_published": "2022-09-26T21:29:00-05:00",
"date_modified": "2022-09-28T07:31:41-05:00",
"author": {
"name": "jeremy"
}
}, {
"id": "4294",
"url": "https://jeremygreenawalt.com/archive/why-i-write-horror-and-childrens-stories",
"title": "Why I Write Horror (and Children’s Stories)",
"content_html": "" <blockquote>\n<p>\u201cI like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things.\u201d<\/p>\n\n<p>\u2014 Tom Waits<\/p>\n<\/blockquote> <figure class=\"inline-image\">\n <picture>\n <img src=\"\/assets\/site\/inline_images\/_inlineImage\/skull-pipe.jpeg\" title=\"Skull pipe\" \/>\n <\/picture>\n <\/figure>\n <p>It\u2019s a question that I get asked, and I\u2019ve answered to varying degrees in conversations with friends, coworkers, and family: Why write horror? Sometimes it comes when we\u2019re talking about hobbies, but it\u2019s often asked with most urgency after reading a short story about child-stealing demons or murdering magicians, as they are deciding whether I\u2019m as well-adjusted as they\u2019d assumed.<\/p>\n<p>The simple answer, which is still true, is that I grew up on it. Some of my deepest memories were formed while I was curled up on the couch with my dad, watching 80s slashers or cheesy monster movies. He would use those moments to teach me about good and evil, bravery in the face of danger, and the importance of not splitting up to explore dark rooms alone.<\/p>\n<p>The deeper reason is that horror (and children\u2019s stories) are a way to talk about very real and serious issues, without actually talking about them. My stories are about faith, fatherhood, generational trauma, the responsibility of creators, and sometimes things individual readers pick up; but they\u2019re also about monsters and things that go bump in the night. It\u2019s not just a veneer to make talking about the deeper things palatable, though. There is something in humans, and how we\u2019re wired to accept stories, that allows them to transcend past the logical parts of our brain and engage truths on a deeper level.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cStories are part of us, and we convey truth with stories, which is fundamentally the most gloriously giant contradiction that you can ever imagine. What we\u2019re saying is, we are using lies, we\u2019re using memorable lies, we are taking people who do not exist and things that did not happen to those people in places that aren\u2019t, and we are using those things to communicate true things to kids and to each other.\u201d<\/p>\n\n<p>\u2014 Neil Gaiman<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Okay, so that kind of explains my shift to fiction, but does it really explain horror and children\u2019s stories? First, I think that a more fantastical story, whether horror, fantasy, or sometimes science fiction, makes it even easier to talk about truths. You\u2019re stepping into a world that is markedly different from your own, even if the only difference is the ability to reanimate bodies with science and electricity; in this new world, the dangers of pride or reckless experimentation are no longer theoretical, and you\u2019ve decided to accept that there are formerly unimaginable consequences for these actions. Through specificity and relatability in this false world, the stories become universal in our world.<\/p>\n<p>Along with that, but I believe that horror taps into the part of our brain that is willing to accept light and dark, good and evil, and things bigger than ourselves. You\u2019ve decided to take the author at his word that anything can happen in this world he created, and you\u2019re letting down your skepticism for just a little bit. As a skeptic and over-analyzer of many things, I know I can learn a lot when I\u2019m forced to just let that go. William Peter Blatty knew that when he was writing <em>The Exorcist<\/em>.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cI was trying to get across that this is not a horror story. This is real. It is a great mystery that providence should permit diabolical activity, but we know that God works for good with those who love him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n<p>\u2014 William Peter Blatty<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The wonderful thing is that children\u2019s stories do the same thing (possibly because horror and fables have always been close relatives, but that\u2019s another article). Of course, I mainly write children\u2019s stories because of my son. He asks, and I agree. I tell him stories about pet dragons, transforming elves, and monsters that seem scary until you know what\u2019s really going on. Afterwards, when he wants to talk about making new friends or the importance of bravery, I just act like that wasn\u2019t what I was writing about all along.<\/p>"",
"date_published": "2022-08-24T06:33:00-05:00",
"date_modified": "2023-10-17T21:25:57-05:00",
"author": {
"name": "jeremy"
}
}, {
"id": "4250",
"url": "https://jeremygreenawalt.com/archive/the-flashlight-game",
"title": "The Flashlight Game",
"content_html": "" <p>This is actually a short story I wrote almost a year ago, and it\u2019s been passed around via Slack and text messages since then. I could talk about the great conversations it\u2019s sparked about fatherhood, generational trauma, and sacrifice, but instead I\u2019ll just say that it\u2019s one of my favorite stories. I was going to hold off on sharing it, but I don\u2019t want to anymore.<\/p>\n<p>The idea came to me while playing a game that my son invented, by the way, in a pitch-black garage with a flashlight. He is the bravest kid I\u2019ve ever met, and it\u2019s for the best that he doesn\u2019t know what scenarios play through my mind when he\u2019s trying to scare me.<br \/><br \/>On a side note, one of my friend\u2019s kids accidentally read it and freaked out sufficiently to avoid the garage and sleep for a few days. You have been warned.<sup><a href=\"#footnote_1\" class=\"footnote-link\">1<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n<p>Read the story below, or download a formatted PDF for your reading pleasure: <a href=\"\/assets\/site\/docs\/The-Flashlight-Game.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Flashlight Game (PDF)<\/a> <\/p> <hr class=\"graphic-separator default\" \/> <p>Isaac and I are playing in the darkened garage when it finally happens. He is inventing a new game as we go along, and he is giggling and screaming. The thin beam of my flashlight goes on and off to briefly illuminate the garage at his command.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOn!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He runs forward into the beam and laughs.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOff!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I hear him skitter back and start running forward again. His tiny, three-year-old feet slapping quietly in the dark.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOn!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He jumps into the beam again and laughs so hard he almost falls over onto the concrete. Before he can fully recover from his laughing fit, he runs up to hug my legs and starts to run backward again.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOff!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I hear him shuffle backward, run into a box and start toward me again. I turn the flashlight on just in time to see the black arms wrap around him and pull him back into the darkness. My beam sweeps across the boxes and the wall behind them, but all I see are shadows and no movement.<\/p>\n<p>Keeping my beam trained on his last spot, I run to the wall and turn on the single overhead bulb in the garage. Light washes over the small room and shadows evaporate, but I see no trace of my son. I should scream and tear the room apart, but I sink down to my knees and try to recover the breath I would need to make any sound at all. I knew this day could come, but I wanted to believe he would be spared a fate he never earned.<\/p>\n<hr \/><p>I don\u2019t know who was the first to be taken, but I know that the curse goes back as far as we have records in my family, save a few lucky generations. My father explained it to me when I was getting married. He said that, just as he had learned from his father, it was time for me to learn the full story before I decided to become a husband and potential father. Technically, he didn\u2019t call it a curse. None of the men in my family know what to call it, but it feels like a curse. My brothers call it a rite or a passage, but they are wrong because they don\u2019t really remember.<\/p>\n<p>When my father told me the history, he asked me if I remembered being taken. I lied and said no, but that wasn\u2019t true. It wasn\u2019t true, and it\u2019s even less true right now. I remember the darkness and the loneliness. I remember the slick arms that grabbed me and the abandonment I felt while my dad just watched without running after me. What actually happened while I was gone, I don\u2019t really remember. I just remember the betrayal, and right now I\u2019m praying that\u2019s not what Isaac will remember.<\/p>\n<p>My father told me that as long as we know, the men in my family have been taken when they were very young, right on the cusp of forming long-term memories. He said that I was taken when I was almost four, but my father and my brothers had all been taken when they were younger than that. My father told me that they believed that\u2019s why nobody really remembered, and I didn\u2019t tell him that I did remember being taken. When he looked in my eyes as he was telling me, part of me thought he remembered, too. I wondered if we all remembered a little, but denied it. The look in Isaac\u2019s eye when he was grabbed said he would remember.<\/p>\n<p>After my father told me about the taking, he assured me that the boys were almost always returned. He said the timing was never consistent, but after a few days or weeks, the sons would be returned. Normally, they were found outside, but close to the home, like they had wandered off in the backyard for a few minutes and found their way back. He said he was found in his front yard after one week, and my brothers were all found crying in the backyard just a few days after disappearing. I was gone for six weeks, and they found me curled up in the corner of the laundry room wedged between the wall and the dryer. He said I didn\u2019t make a sound, and they didn\u2019t know when I returned. I didn\u2019t tell him at the time that I remembered being found, but I also remembered waiting. I don\u2019t remember what happened in what I called The Nowhere Place, but I did remember being back in the laundry room. It was so dark and quiet, I didn\u2019t know that I was truly back, and I curled up in the corner for a day before I was found by my mother.<\/p>\n<p>My father didn\u2019t say much about the boys that weren\u2019t returned. He told me about one of his uncles that wasn\u2019t returned and another boy a few generations back, but he didn\u2019t mention Jamie. I wouldn\u2019t hear about Jamie until a few years later when one of my uncles got drunk at Thanksgiving and let it slip. We were on the back porch talking about the big family secrets when he got real quiet and told me about my parents\u2019 true firstborn son. He was evidently born a couple of years before me. There are no pictures of him around the house, but I still hope to find some in a hidden box after my parents have passed so I can see my brother for the first time.<\/p>\n<p>My uncle said that Jamie was conceived before my father knew everything he knew about our family, but my dad did his best to protect Jamie after he found out. When Jamie was not even two years old, he was running in the snow with my dad when something from deep in the pure, white powder reached up and pulled him down into a snowbank. By the time my dad reached him just a few feet away, he was gone. My dad searched for hours before finally going inside and telling my mom about the curse. She didn\u2019t believe him and wanted to call the police and get the neighbors\u2019 help, but he convinced her that Jamie would come back if they just waited. He told her getting outsiders involved would only provoke more questions when he inevitably turned back up in a few days, so they waited. My parents waited for days, then weeks and months, but he never came back and there was never a trace of him found again. They waited for over a year, and they probably would have given up on having a family completely if my mom hadn\u2019t found out she was pregnant with me after eighteen months of waiting for Jamie to come back.<\/p>\n<p>That same uncle had a theory about firstborn sons that I am trying not to think about as I still swing my flashlight beam across the empty garage just to see if I can illuminate the darkened corners even now that I\u2019ve turned on the overhead light. The fact is that he is obviously not here anymore, and whatever took him didn\u2019t leave a trace. It looked dark and sinewy, but I have no reason to believe that matters. The taking isn\u2019t as bad as whatever happens afterward.<\/p>\n<p>In reality, I don\u2019t believe any of us remember what happens while we are gone. It could be because we are always so young, or it could be some effect of The Nowhere Place. Over the years, the men\u2019s theories have evolved from myths of Hades and Gehenna to equally fantastical ideas of parallel dimensions and time-space rifts before coming back to fears of ancient gods and generational curses. Wherever we go remains a mystery because nobody has ever remembered a thing, at least nobody who has been able to communicate it. Some have come back mute or uncommunicative for years, maybe because they did remember The Nowhere Place and couldn\u2019t speak until they had forgotten.<\/p>\n<p>Wherever the sons go, they are all changed when they come back. Most are not struck dumb or catatonic, but they are all changed by the event. A piece of innocence is always taken, and everybody responds differently. I came back shell-shocked and afraid of every noise or dark room. Some of my brothers came back angry at the world, and others just came back without the spark that made them unique. Isaac is bold and creative and everything I wished I could have been. I think he\u2019s what I was supposed to be like before I was taken.<\/p>\n<p>What will he be like when he comes back?<\/p>\n<hr \/><p>As I stop tearing through the boxes in my garage, I know that I must bring my son back before he is changed or gone forever like Jamie, and I have one last hope on which to attach my resolve. If one of my father\u2019s other stories is true, then I have one chance to pull him back while he\u2019s still close.<\/p>\n<p>I remember asking my dad, when Mary was pregnant with Isaac, if anybody had ever rescued a son from The Nowhere Place. At first, he looked at me like I had just asked if we had ever tried not obeying gravity or just denying death. I could tell the thought of beating fate had never occurred to him, and I started to lose hope of an answer before he started to tell me one of the other myths in our family.<\/p>\n<p>He said it happened in the old country, before we fled persecution and superstition to land in America. My family fled our home country a long time ago, so I imagined this had to have been around the 16th century, if any of it was true. He told me that he never believed the story, but it had been passed down through the generations and might explain a bit about our family history and what life was like before we had to flee our home.<\/p>\n<p>According to the story, one of my forefathers was standing there when his only son disappeared, and he refused to let him go. He was a successful man in his day, but he and his wife had not been able to have children until they were older. He thought that the line was going to end with him until he was surprised to find his wife pregnant one day. She was older, though, and the pregnancy was hard on her body. They said that he prayed for mercy every day lest the bloodline end with him, but eventually, she gave birth to a healthy baby boy. They were so excited that they doted on him and spoiled him in every way. He was growing into a strong and healthy toddler when his father saw the long, dark arms pull him into the wall and into The Nowhere Place.<\/p>\n<p>He screamed in agony and fury, and he begged to be taken instead. His wife ran in to find him sprawled out on the ground, and he told her about the arms and the wall as he banged his fists on the floor. She said that he pled for mercy on his son and started to curse his own life. He started to cut his palms, saying that the blood might draw the arms back, and she ran out of the room as scared of her husband as she was of whatever might come back into their house. She ran to get the rabbi, and when they came back and opened the door to the small room, the man was gone. Their son was laying on his bed, catatonic, and they found a pile of stones in the middle of the room with a small amount of blood on it. The father was never seen again, but his son recovered the next day. The men of the village helped raise him, and the story goes that he grew up to be a wise and powerful leader in the small village despite the dark rumors that made the older ones fear him. His mother told him the story of his father\u2019s sacrifice when he was older, and he never had to make his choice because they said that the curse was lifted even after they fled for the new world. No sons were taken until my grandfather disappeared around 1920, only to return a few days later.<\/p>\n<p>My father told me at the time that the story was most likely apocryphal, and I always wondered if that was because it was actually untrue or because of what its truth would say about all the generations of fathers who had let their sons be taken. If it was true, I wondered what could have brought the curse back almost three centuries later to take my grandfather. At the time my dad told me, I was judgmental of the fathers in my family and didn\u2019t fully understand. Everything was theoretical, and I was still thinking about myself as a son. My understanding changed the moment my son disappeared, though.<\/p>\n<hr \/><p>I now understand why my forefather did what he did, and I understand why others did not. I know that they believed that their sons would return, even if they were slightly changed, and they would need a father. That is logical, and I am trying to convince myself of that even as I stack up the bricks in the middle of the garage. I\u2019m still stacking the bricks because, as rational as waiting could be, I cannot bring myself to do it.<\/p>\n<p>My son has been taken, and I will do anything to bring him back unchanged and knowing that I would do anything for him. I saw the look of betrayal on his face as he was swallowed up into the darkness, and he has to know how much I love him.<\/p>\n<p>After I have made a small altar from leftover bricks and stones in my garage, the rest of the ritual comes to me as I am quietly moving around the garage and beginning my pleas just loud enough to not be heard by Isaac\u2019s mother in the kitchen. I am writing some instructions and history down on a spare notebook that had previously only held doodles and measurements for projects because I need to make sure that Isaac and Mary know that I didn\u2019t leave them. They need to know our history, and they need to know that the curse is broken.<\/p>\n<p>As soon as I am done writing my last letter and praying for mercy for Isaac, I slice the palms of my hands with a box cutter from my old toolbox and start my own sacrifice on the altar I have built. As the blood drips from my clenched fists, it flows between the bricks and I smell sulfur wrap around me. The bitter taste stings my tongue as I breathe it in, and I hear the scratching of nails on the concrete below me. I feel the arms wrap around me as everything gets darker, they tighten like anacondas around my arms and legs and pull me into the floor, but I see Isaac free in the garage waving at me and crying. I hear his voice call out to me as I disappear. After I have sunken as far below the garage as possible, I see only black and hear only silence, but I know that Isaac is free and the curse has been lifted for as many generations as it takes for them to somehow bring it back. Isaac won\u2019t have to make the decision I did, and I feel the tears of relief roll down my face as the darkness envelops me.<\/p>"",
"date_published": "2022-08-17T06:57:00-05:00",
"date_modified": "2022-08-24T06:44:18-05:00",
"author": {
"name": "jeremy"
}
}, {
"id": "3878",
"url": "https://jeremygreenawalt.com/archive/another-season-another-schedule",
"title": "Another Season, Another Schedule",
"content_html": "" <blockquote>\u201cBe regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work.\u201d<br \/><br \/>\u2014 Gustave Flaubert in Letter to Gertrude Tennant (December 25, 1876)<\/blockquote>\n<p>I like schedules. I believe that a good schedule just gives me some nice guardrails, and I can play freely within each block. A couple of times a year, I will lay out my schedule anew, and it will run smoothly until it doesn\u2019t. I had a pretty good schedule for the first half of this year until it slowly crumbled, piece by piece.<\/p>\n<p>This was my schedule (until it wasn\u2019t): wake up, get my four-year-old ready, take him to school, come back home and work, workout in the garage, pick son up, entertain him, and write after he went to bed. I have written in the morning and evening, and it was fun to write after the house was dark. I\u2019ve also worked out at different times, but I enjoyed the break after work. A few months ago, I got a rowing machine, and I decided to wake up earlier to use that before my son was up. No big deal.<\/p>\n<p>Then, life slowly changed. We\u2019re going through a record heatwave in Texas, so working out in my garage in the afternoon went from \u201cI need a fan\u201d to \u201cI could die.\u201d I\u2019m stubborn, so I stuck it out.<\/p>\n<p>More importantly, my son is now four-and-a-half, going on twelve, and he has decided he doesn\u2019t like going to bed. He really doesn\u2019t like going to bed while I\u2019m still awake, and he was making that clear every ten minutes at my office door<sup><a href=\"#footnote_1\" class=\"footnote-link\">1<\/a><\/sup>. Plus, I\u2019ve made it clear that I will always pick him over writing, and I stand by that. He\u2019s not a distraction, but I did have to make a new plan.<\/p>\n<p>So, I\u2019ve thrown out my old schedule, and I\u2019m embracing a new one:<\/p>\n<ul><li>Wake up even earlier<\/li>\n\t<li>Workout in the garage before the heat can kill me<\/li>\n\t<li>Get cleaned up<\/li>\n\t<li>Write for an hour<\/li>\n\t<li>Get my son ready and take him to school<\/li>\n\t<li>Work<\/li>\n\t<li>Pick my son up, or use the rowing machine on the days I don\u2019t pick him up<\/li>\n\t<li>I\u2019m done\u2026 relax with my son, or clean, or work on a side project<\/li>\n\t<li>Go to bed at the same time as a four-and-a-half year old<\/li>\n<\/ul><p>How\u2019s it working? Like I said, I\u2019ve written in the mornings and the evenings (and I\u2019ve even written about making this shift before<sup><a href=\"#footnote_2\" class=\"footnote-link\">2<\/a><\/sup>), and I realize the most important thing is finding the time to focus. I\u2019m reminding myself (again) not to be too precious with my routines. They exist for a reason, and that reason is, in my case, finding time to be a dad, earning a paycheck, putting words on the page, and trying to keep my body from falling apart (in that order). We have an incredible ability to adapt, and this will work (until it doesn\u2019t).<\/p>\n<p>For now, I\u2019ll just embrace the change, make an extra shot of espresso, and pray for the day that I can enforce bedtime like a champ.<br \/><\/p>\n"",
"date_published": "2022-07-15T08:02:00-05:00",
"date_modified": "2022-07-15T08:36:36-05:00",
"author": {
"name": "jeremy"
}
}, {
"id": "3823",
"url": "https://jeremygreenawalt.com/archive/what-i-learned-finishing-my-first-novel-rewrite",
"title": "What I Learned Finishing My First Novel Rewrite",
"content_html": "" <p>The rough draft of my very first novel took me five months to write. I was so proud, I printed it out and made my first round of notes by hand with a red-inked fountain pen. I didn\u2019t think it was that bad. Then, I started the chapter-by-chapter rewrites.<\/p>\n<p>The first few chapters were fun. I mean, I scrapped most of what I had written, but the new words seemed readily available. I was sending out the chapters, people were reading them and making notes, and it was getting better.<\/p>\n<p>Then, I reached the middle. My only solace was that, as a reader, I knew I wasn\u2019t the first writer to struggle with the middle section. I hated it. I rewrote everything even more, I cussed in the margins, and people stopped giving me their notes. I get it. I would have stopped, too, if it wasn\u2019t my book.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, last week I reached the ending. I really, really rewrote the final chapters, but the epilogue stayed almost exactly the same. Suddenly, I looked up, and I had finished my first major rewrite of my first novel. It had taken fourteen months.<\/p>\n<p>A lot can change in fourteen months. I changed a lot in fourteen months. My household changed a lot in fourteen months. I\u2019ve changed jobs and everything else, and the only constant was this book. Now, this book is on pause while I wait for feedback from my friends, and I\u2019m left to think about the process and start my next book (and maybe some short stories I can share).<\/p>\n<p>So, what have I learned so far?<br \/><\/p>\n <hr class=\" default\" \/> <h2>Progress isn\u2019t linear.<\/h2>\n<p>Just like working out, eating healthy, or doing anything else to improve yourself, progress was never linear, and past experience had very little to do with the future predictions. Some chapters were smooth, and some seemed almost impossible to fix (until I did or scrapped them). Devoting an hour to writing a day, and still trying to churn out original article and short stories, I could never chart my progress well on this book. I thought developers were bad at estimating large projects, but it\u2019s nothing compared to authors and their projects. All I could do was force myself to sit down and work on it. Some days, I rewrote a whole chapter, and some days I just tried to outline a way out of the corner I\u2019d written myself into.<\/p>\n<h2>Timelines are meaningless.<\/h2>\n<p>After finally accepting the last point, I had to accept the meaningless of my own timelines. Nobody\u2019s waiting on this book, and my own schedule was completely arbitrary. It didn\u2019t matter if it only took my five months to write the first draft, and nobody really cares how long it took me to fix it. When I go back and fix more, nobody will care how long that takes.<\/p>\n<h2>Anonymity is a gift.<\/h2>\n<p>I never understood this before, and I didn\u2019t really take advantage of it as a developer or designer. I finally got it while I was writing this book, though. The fact that nobody was waiting for it (and almost nobody is probably reading these words) became a great gift as I struggled through the slog. I\u2019m too \u201cold\u201d as a developer to majorly screw things up, and I don\u2019t have the pleasure of working for tiny agencies anymore. As an author, though, I would have cracked long ago if anybody had been anxiously waiting on these chapters. You\u2019ll probably ignore me, too, but I do want to reiterate how great it is to still be an unknown quantity at times.<\/p>\n<h2>None of the words matter until I publish them.<\/h2>\n<p>This was a big thing. I read the first draft, and I cringed. Then, I realized it didn\u2019t matter. Nobody else had read those words, and I could fix them before anybody could judge me. Even my rewrite will probably have some cringe-worthy moments, but that\u2019s okay. I\u2019ll fix those before anybody but my closest friends and family read them. Along with being unknown, this was the greatest gift (and it would still apply even after I\u2019m known).<\/p>\n<h2>I can be two things.<\/h2>\n<p>Finally, I learned that I could be two things. This wasn\u2019t just part of doing a rewrite, but it was a life lesson that I finally learned near the end of the process. I can be a web developer and a writer, and neither one has to be at the exclusion of the other. I don\u2019t have to quit development, and I don\u2019t have to give up my dreams of writing another book. I can be a web developer <em>and<\/em> a writer. I can be two things.<br \/><\/p> <hr class=\" default\" \/> <p>Well, that\u2019s everything I learned. I also learned that I write really sparse rough drafts, but I think that will change. I\u2019m excited to get back to this novel to finish it up, but I have a lot of ideas for short stories (for my kid and for adults) and at least one killer idea for my next novel. Of course, I\u2019m still anonymous, so not that many people will be following this, but I\u2019m now okay with that. I\u2019m still a writer.<\/p>"",
"date_published": "2022-06-29T20:39:00-05:00",
"date_modified": "2022-06-29T20:50:51-05:00",
"author": {
"name": "jeremy"
}
}, {
"id": "3778",
"url": "https://jeremygreenawalt.com/archive/the-grand-guignol",
"title": "The Grand Guignol",
"content_html": "" <p>The assignment for our writing group was simple. We just had to write a compelling story with the following rules:<br \/><\/p>\n<ol><li>Must be set in the real world<\/li>\n\t<li>Must not include anything magical, paranormal, or supernatural<\/li>\n\t<li>Must not include any advanced science or technology that does not actually exist in the real world<\/li>\n<\/ol><p>Well, it would have been simple if we didn\u2019t all write fantasy, sci-fi, and supernatural horror (my usual shtick). Instead, we had to write without any of the normal crutches, and try to make it interesting. After watching <em>Nightmare Alley<\/em>, I knew it was possible to evoke a lot true horror without the supernatural, and I had been really wanting to research and write a period piece. So, I got to read even more about something that has always been interesting and horrifying to me, the Grand Guignol. <\/p>\n<p>By the way, if you would rather not read this in your browser (like me), allow me to offer <a href=\"\/assets\/site\/docs\/The-Grand-Guignol.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">this finely crafted PDF<\/a>.<\/p> <hr class=\"graphic-separator default\" \/> <p>\u201cYou have paid your money, you are here to witness horror, most gruesome, and you will not be disappointed. Make no mistake, there is nothing magical, supernatural, or paranormal in what you will see. Please, though, have no fear; for no matter what your mind may tell you, these are all just deceptions and trickery, designed to entertain your basest desires.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Andr\u00e9 waited for the translator to echo his words to the waiting crowd, and cursed himself for failing to learn his patter in French. He didn\u2019t want to learn another language, and he didn\u2019t think he owed it to his Parisian audience, but he envied the additional worldliness and class it would help him project if he ever returned home.<\/p>\n<p>Among the Parisians of 1921, he had passed himself off as Andr\u00e9 the Magnificent, a renowned stage magician from New York. Some of the other ex-pats would have heard the concealed strains of Oklahoma if they hadn\u2019t been so inebriated. Even worse, they might know that the real Andr\u00e9 the Magnificent was about thirty years older and had disappeared from society years ago. The Andr\u00e9 they saw had learned everything from the old man, though, and saw no reason not to take his name when he was gone. It sounded much better than George, a name shared by at least twelve other members of the younger man\u2019s family in Enid, Oklahoma.<\/p>\n<p>Our Andr\u00e9 welcomed his assistant to the stage and helped her into the box at the center of the spotlight. As he had done for hundreds of shows, he twirled the box around, so everyone could see her head sticking out one end and her supposed feet sticking out the other. It wasn\u2019t an original trick, but this venue allowed him to add a twist. He brought out the saw, allowed a few excited audience members to feel the sharpness of its teeth, and clanged it loudly against the box to show how solid it was. Finally, he started to saw his assistant in half, and she began to scream. As she screamed, blood dripped out of the bottom of the box and pooled in vivid colors on the clean stage floor. Her screams turned to gurgling moans as red liquid bubbled from her mouth, and finally, he separated the box in two, allowing guts and overflowing blood to splash out onto the ground. The moans and dry heaves behind him were drowned out by laughter as a few of the weaker patrons fled the theatre. Moments later, stagehands came out and whisked away all evidence, allowing his beautiful assistant to get cleaned up before the final curtain call.<\/p>\n<hr \/><p>In 1897, Oscar M\u00e9t\u00e9nier opened Le Th\u00e9\u00e2tre du Grand-Guignol, known simply as the Grand Guignol, in the same tourist-laden Paris district where Moulin Rouge would open a couple of years later. In the early 1900s, he transferred it to Max Maurey \u2014 for reasons that are still unknown \u2014 who made it famous for a trademark type of naturalistic horror. On the small stage erected in the former chapel, up to two-hundred and fifty audience members, or <em>guignolers<\/em>, would gather to watch a lineup of alternating brutal horror pageants and silly comic shows. Most of the plays centered on themes of infidelity and jealousy, which alternately led to slapstick comedy or bloody vengeance.<\/p>\n<p>The Grand Guignol was famed for the realistic scenes that featured severed heads dropping to the stage, bit players being cooked in acid, and actors gouging out eyes with spoons. One character famously had her face repeatedly pushed down onto a red-hot skillet, where it sizzled loudly and smelled of burnt flesh.<\/p>\n<p>Though the theatre was always clear that everything was safe, and all the actors returned at curtain calls to show themselves unharmed, the brutality was often too much for casual spectators. Audience members would regularly vomit in the aisles, and the Grand Guignol averaged two faintings a night for most of its run. Max Maurey even used this to his advantage as a marketing ploy when he hired doctors to stand by at performances.<\/p>\n<p>What the Grand Guignol really specialized in, besides stories of the macabre and ludicrous, was live special effects. They used red rubber hoses and sponges soaked in animal blood, a bald cap to simulate brain surgery, and hand bulbs to squirt blood through a hollow in the spoons that were used to gouge out false eyes. Their fake blood came in nine different shades, and even coagulated and made scabs as it cooled. Most importantly, they relied on sleight-of-hand to pull off these tricks in such a close environment, palming bags of fake acid and switching bloody implements under the close eyes of the audience.<\/p>\n<hr \/><p>When he came to France following the First World War, Andr\u00e9 the Magnificent had big dreams of being the next Houdini, who himself borrowed the name of French magician Jean-Eug\u00e8ne Robert-Houdin. After failing to make a name for himself on the big stages, he was more than happy to join the Grand Guignol\u2019s tight-knit troupe after he met the fair Violette.<\/p>\n<p>She had been an understudy when he first saw her on the stage, and he had seen her clumsy attempts to hide a bloody facial prosthetic before having \u201cacid\u201d thrown in her face. After the curtain call, he had caught up with her and showed her how to conceal the rubber piece fully like it was a magician\u2019s scarf, and then demonstrated a few misdirections for the final reveal. Max, constantly looking for cheap talent, had seen the hearts in Andr\u00e9\u2019s eyes and hired him that very night to train the actors and oversee the illusions, in exchange for a meager salary and stage time between plays to hone his act.<\/p>\n<p>Soon after, Andr\u00e9 gave up his cheap hotel room and found an apartment for Violette and himself, and she became his assistant for his interstitial magic acts. With his teaching, she also grew to be a rising star in the horror dramas, and Andr\u00e9 was happy that more people were finally seeing the beautiful ing\u00e9nue he had fallen in love with. Sometimes, late at night, he would stare at her alabaster skin in the moonlight of their small apartment, see the dark strands of her hair falling across her cheek, and wonder how he had gotten so lucky. Other times, he wondered if he actually could be that lucky without everything falling apart.<\/p>\n<hr \/><p>It was a miserable, rainy night when it all fell apart. It had been almost a year, and Andr\u00e9 could increasingly be found at the bar next to the Grand Guignol before the late show. He would either be commiserating the slow death of his career in the corner, or attempting to impress the tourists with false stories of bravado in the war he had dodged; pretending to be an American soldier who had stuck around.<\/p>\n<p>On this particular night, he desires instead to see his fair Violette, and he slipped up to the hallway outside her dressing room. He stood before the door, about to turn the knob, when he heard a man\u2019s voice. Andr\u00e9 couldn\u2019t understand the words, but the voice of Violette\u2019s reply was the passionate one she used to reserve for him. She couldn\u2019t even fake that one on stage, and he realized she hadn\u2019t spoken that way to him in a month. He wanted to burst in the door and catch them in the act, but he found himself wilting. Andr\u00e9 the Magnificent might push the door open and demand answers, but George from Enid didn\u2019t feel like he had ever deserved Violette. As he was thinking, the door started to open, and he ducked around the nearest corner.<\/p>\n<p>In the darkness of the hallway, he watched the light spill out from Violette\u2019s room as the leading man of the Grand Guignol, Claude, stepped out. Tall and handsome, Claude had a reputation for seducing the tourists passing through their little district, and Andr\u00e9 hated him even more as he watched him buckling his belt and striding away down the hallway. Violette stepped out to watch him leave, still wearing the sheer nightgown she must have entertained him in, and Andr\u00e9 slunk back into the shadows. He saw the look on her face, even as she turned away from him, and he knew this was not the first time Claude had visited her backstage.<\/p>\n<p>Slipping away, Andr\u00e9 went downstairs for his drink and found himself alone in a dark corner of the bar. He thought about how much he had Violette, and his mind ran through snapshot memories of their times together. Then, he started to replay the memories to look for clues. He thought about Claude, and how he was constantly setting out to upstage Andr\u00e9 between the plays, and wondered if that\u2019s what he had been doing backstage as well. Most of all, he thought about himself. He wasn\u2019t really Andr\u00e9 the Magnificent; he was George from Enid. This had all been a dream, that had become a nightmare, and he was ready to wake up. Before he did, though, he needed to make sure he could never be forgotten.<\/p>\n<p>An hour later, the stage was set for the horror show, and Andr\u00e9 performed with his usual precision. He hardly made eye contact with Violette, except to give her the necessary signals for parts of their act. In the harsh light of the stage, Violette\u2019s eyes looked alien to him. Smeared with mascara, it looked like she had attempted to cover up the remnants of tears by reapplying her makeup too many times. He thought she was endeavoring to look at him with the same love she always had, but all he could return was a cold stare as he cut her in half, stabbed her with spring-loaded knives, and spilled rubber guts and fake blood onto the stage.<\/p>\n<p>After the last comedy skit of the night, the audience called for an encore, as they did on most nights. Surprising everyone, Andr\u00e9 stepped onto the stage with a flourish. After a moment\u2019s pause, he loudly called for his dear Violette, as he still referred to her. She stepped onto the stage, wearing the long, dark dressing gown she regularly wore after cleaning off the congealed blood. She was obviously dressed for a curtain call, but Andr\u00e9 assured her it was okay. He said she wouldn\u2019t need to fit in any boxes or contort her body for this final trick.<\/p>\n<p>With no practiced patter, Andr\u00e9 was completely silent as he arranged the set for the encore. Once he had everything in place, he turned to the audience, who should have been restless, but had grown only more curious after a night of increasing brutality and absurdity.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor an encore, I would like my beautiful Violette to take center stage and perform one of my tricks, for I will be her victim \u2014 I mean assistant.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Violette showed a moment of confusion before she forced a stage smile across her face. They had improvised similar setups before, and she strode into the spotlight with practiced poise. Dropping into French, she tried to remember Andr\u00e9\u2019s usual patter about the French Revolution and great inventions as she showed the crowd the guillotine that Andr\u00e9 had rolled out. For a demonstration, she let the blade drop on one of their stage dummies, and the internal blood bag sprayed red mist into the air as it split open, and the wooden head hit the ground.<\/p>\n<p>Andr\u00e9 kicked aside the bloody remains of the dummy, ignored the safety switch, and pulled the blade back up to its deadly starting position. With practiced movements, he laid down and allowed Violette to lower the stocks, locking his neck and wrists into position under the sharpened steel. Without the safety switch set, Andr\u00e9 knew that the blade would not disengage at the last second. He would feel no pain, but his brain would continue to function for a crucial few seconds as he saw Violette\u2019s face one last time. When he was researching his patter for this trick, he remembered reading that anticipating the blade would make it hurt, as the body was too primed and tense, so he tried to relax his muscles as best he could. He imagined his final moments and dreamed that his final act would be written about for decades to come.<\/p>\n<p>He wondered if, mistaking him for the original Andr\u00e9 the Magnificent, the New York Times would even write up a blurb. He thought about how they would be giving credit to the old man, and he wondered if he had made a great mistake. George began to wonder if he actually wanted to live, if at least to not make the wrong man famous, but he realized it was too late. Any moment, she would pull the rope and spill real blood across the stage.<\/p>\n<p>After some more ruminating, he realized that Violette had not moved to the rope, and he was still alive. He wondered if she had seen through his ruse, become overcome with guilt, and was about to free him. His heart began to lift with love and appreciation for life as he waited for her arms to wrap around him.<\/p>\n<p>He heard the sudden burst of applause, but he couldn\u2019t see what was happening. The stocks held his head firmly in place; he could only see the reaction of the audience as they looked to stage right and clapped. He felt the top of the stocks come off, and he grew angry and despondent when he felt two large, strong hands lift him to his feet. He knew Violette had not saved him, and he turned around to see Claude smiling and hamming it up for the crowd as he tried to upstage Andr\u00e9 one more time.<\/p>\n<p>After being roughly set to the side, Andr\u00e9 watched in stunned silence as Claude laid down where he had just been, and Violette locked the stocks in place. After a dramatic kiss on Claude\u2019s lips, she walked around to the rope that would release the blade. Andr\u00e9 found himself shuffled out of the spotlight and into the shadows.<\/p>\n<p>As Andr\u00e9 the Magnificent slipped out the side door and walked away from his old life, Claude\u2019s head rolled down into the audience. The doctors on standby turned out to be paid actors as well, but it didn\u2019t matter. The audience believed they had seen the best effects of the night, and only the employees of the Grand Guignol knew what had really happened. Fearing being shut down after a tragic accident, Max paid the cast and stagehands well to never speak of it, and nothing was ever published in the New York Times or elsewhere.<\/p>\n<p>The man once known as Andr\u00e9 the Magnificent, and named George at birth, returned to the states a week later with a new name. Fearing going home penniless and a failure, he eventually found work with a traveling carnival as a barker. After hours, when he pretended to be more drunk than he was, he loved to tell the locals about his time as a lead actor at the Grand Guignol. He said that\u2019s where he got his name, Claude the Invincible.<\/p>\n<p><br \/><\/p>"",
"date_published": "2022-04-18T07:00:00-05:00",
"date_modified": "2022-08-17T07:17:09-05:00",
"author": {
"name": "jeremy"
}
}, {
"id": "3748",
"url": "https://jeremygreenawalt.com/archive/inked-again",
"title": "Inked (Again)",
"content_html": "" <blockquote>\n<p>\u201cShow me a man with a tattoo and I'll show you a man with an interesting past.\u201d <\/p>\n\n<p>\u2015 Jack London<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>I got a few tattoos in my twenties. I would have gotten full sleeves, if I could. Luckily, I married a girl who appreciated the tattoos but didn\u2019t want to see any more, so I stopped. I say luckily because I had pretty basic ideas back then. I\u2019ve come to believe that tattoos are like writing: most of us need more life experience before we have anything worth saying or permanently marking on our bodies. Just as importantly, I didn\u2019t have the patience or money to do them right.<\/p>\n<p>Now, I\u2019m in my forties, and I still don\u2019t have much worth saying, but I have the time and patience to put down a deposit on an artist who books six months in advance and save up the money to get proper ink. That is to say, I got my first tattoo in twenty years last month, two days before my birthday. Last year I found Joe Chavez of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.zombietattoojoe.com\" title=\"Zombie Joe Tattoos\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Zombie Joe Tattoos<\/a>, put down a deposit for a full-day session, and spent six months trying to nail down what I really wanted.<\/p>\n<p>As the day neared, I shifted from excited to nervous. At first, I thought it was because an all-day session sounded daunting, especially after all these years. My helpful wife sent me an article with tips about getting plenty of sleep the night before, drinking water and snacking; it said that people often find it harder to sit for long sessions as they get older. She was actually trying to be helpful.<\/p>\n<p>Still, it wasn\u2019t the pain that made me nervous. I was nervous because I still couldn\u2019t picture what I was getting. Even after all my planning and research, I only had vague ideas and bad sketches. My other tattoos were basic, but this was different.<\/p>\n<p>Consequently, I hardly slept the night before\u2014 which breaks the first rule of preparing for a long session.<\/p>\n<p>Then, with a backpack holding my water bottle, snacks, and a spare phone battery that I wouldn\u2019t need, I entered Joe\u2019s shop, sleep-deprived and nervous.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat are we doing today?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOkay. I want a vintage typewriter to cover my forearm, but that\u2019s all I know.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSounds great! Got any references?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cKind of, but that\u2019s the catch.\u201d I fumbled with my phone and showed him a few collected images. \u201cThese are the other typewriter tattoos I could find, but I don\u2019t like most of them. This one is okay, but not exactly what I want, either. I really like the size of his unrelated half-sleeve you did. Does any of this help?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m normally best described as over-prepared, but I had failed and decided to lean on the expert. \u201cI just want you to do what you think is best.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is all good. I can work with this.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Suddenly, at that moment, I felt calm. I believed him.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAny words?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Joe does amazing lettering, and I knew this going in. I had originally not wanted any more words on my skin after tiring of explaining the Hebrew on my arm and the ill-planned Kanji on my chest. Still, this was a typewriter, it deserved some letters to type, and I had found the right words. I told him I wanted \u201ccarry the fire.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s from Cormac McCarthy\u2019s <em>The Road<\/em>, a book that I read when it came out, and have re-read twice since becoming a father. In the book, it\u2019s the father\u2019s message to his son, when he\u2019s desperately trying to encapsulate everything he wants to pass along. It\u2019s about moving forward, being a light, carrying a torch for humanity, living a noble life, and so much more. For me, it\u2019s a message to my son, a reminder to myself to be always teaching my son, and a bit of a challenge to write books worth re-reading.<\/p>\n<p>I explained parts of this to Joe before he smiled, nodded, and disappeared next door for what felt like forever to look up real, printable reference material. I read a long profile piece on Ben Stiller on my phone; that wasn\u2019t my intention, but I don\u2019t normally fiddle with my phone.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, not actually that much later, he came back with a stencil. It was perfect. I was already jealous of future-me, who would have this awesome tattoo.<\/p>\n<p>Over the next five or six hours, he traced the stencil for an outline, placed it, tattooed the outline, added details to my skin (so many details), inked shadows onto every key, added white highlights, and shaded the area around the paper. It looked perfect, and he said I sat like a champ (evidently daydreaming and not moving is part of my skill set). A few bathroom breaks, a protein bar, and some water kept me going.<br \/><\/p>\n<p>Near the end, Joe asked if he could redo my faded wrist tattoo which was almost touching the masterpiece, and I said, \u201cOf course,\u201d while I tried not to think about the pain of going back over that wrist ink. It wasn\u2019t too bad.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, we added the pi\u00e8ce de r\u00e9sistance, a drawing my 4yo made of a stomach bug, named Sad Face (who\u2019s sad because he\u2019s afraid of stomachs). Shep came up to the shop just in time to see that finished.<\/p>\n<p>Now, it\u2019s been a month, and the new ink is just a part of my arm. It feels natural, like it\u2019s always been there, waiting to be visible. My son, meanwhile, said he\u2019ll be sad when it washes off. He doesn\u2019t have a great grasp on tattoos, but I\u2019ll take that as his seal of approval.<br \/><\/p> <figure>\n <picture class=\"lazyload\">\n <source srcset=\"\/assets\/site\/inline_images\/_2400xAUTO_crop_center-center_none\/sad-face.jpeg\" media=\"(min-width: 800px)\">\n <source srcset=\"\/assets\/site\/inline_images\/_1600xAUTO_crop_center-center_none\/sad-face.jpeg\" media=\"(min-width: 600px)\">\n <source srcset=\"\/assets\/site\/inline_images\/_1200xAUTO_crop_center-center_none\/sad-face.jpeg\" media=\"(min-width: 480px)\">\n <source srcset=\"\/assets\/site\/inline_images\/_960xAUTO_crop_center-center_none\/sad-face.jpeg\" media=\"(min-width: 320px)\">\n <source srcset=\"\/assets\/site\/inline_images\/_640xAUTO_crop_center-center_none\/sad-face.jpeg\" media=\"(min-width: 5px)\">\n <img src=\"\/assets\/site\/inline_images\/_preload\/sad-face.jpeg\" \/>\n <\/picture>\n <\/figure>\n "",
"date_published": "2022-04-07T07:49:00-05:00",
"date_modified": "2022-04-08T16:36:04-05:00",
"author": {
"name": "jeremy"
}
}, {
"id": "3724",
"url": "https://jeremygreenawalt.com/archive/that-magic-moment-that-takes-work",
"title": "That Magic Moment (That’s Surrounded by Work)",
"content_html": "" <blockquote>\n<p>\u201cInspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work.\u201d<\/p>\n\n<p>\u2014 Chuck Close<\/p>\n<\/blockquote> <figure class=\"inline-image\">\n <a data-fancybox=\"gallery\" href=\"\/assets\/site\/hero_images\/_full\/Lamy2000.jpeg\"> <picture>\n <img src=\"\/assets\/site\/hero_images\/_inlineImage\/Lamy2000.jpeg\" title=\"Lamy 2000\" \/>\n <\/picture>\n <\/a> <\/figure>\n <p>There is a magical moment, one that happens at least once per finished piece of writing, when I know that something needs to be written, and why. I don\u2019t take this for granted. Most ideas never get that far. I have a process that kills off most ideas early, and only the few that give me the great \u201caha\u201d moment make it to the page. That just makes the survivors valuable enough that I will lovingly shepherd them forth, making any sacrifices necessary.<\/p>\n<p>Before I talk about \u201cthe moment,\u201d though, I need to dispel any hope that this is brought about by glorious moments of inspiration. It is forced out through a repeatable process with a clear, boring beginning: an assignment and a blank page. I could, theoretically, already have a solid idea, but that\u2019s never happened (see me crushing earlier dreams of inspiration). No. I have to force ideas out through the pressure of an assignment. The assignment is normally self-created and self-imposed, but I\u2019m a strict task master once I make an assignment. It can be a vague idea (e.g., 90s hardcore music), a fun theme (e.g., Christmas), or an actual request from someone else (e.g., short story for a horror collection). Whatever the case, that\u2019s the assignment.<\/p>\n<p>Now, I brainstorm. I write down a lot of ideas. Most of them are bad. Many are very bad. I keep writing. If nothing sticks, I re-think the parameters or re-contextualize the assignment to give myself more space to work with. Then, I write more ideas. At this point, they are still mostly bad, but one or two may spark a trail that I will follow\u2026 until it dead-ends into more bad ideas. At some point, if this thing will ever be written, I will write something down that just clicks.<\/p>\n<p>What does it mean to click? It doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s a good idea. I will, by chance or plagiarism, have a couple of good ideas, but they are disposable. No. At some point, I will write a germ of a seed of an idea down that gets me excited. It gets me so excited that I suddenly think, \u201cThis has to be written!\u201d I will even know <em>why<\/em> it has to be written. Brainstorming about 90s hardcore music, I might write down \u201ccult,\u201d and I really see \u201cdetail a decade of spiritual abuse and a cult coming out of the insular Christian hardcore scene of the 90s.\u201d Now, in a flash, I have something that will be written because I have something I believe <em>must<\/em> be written.<\/p>\n<p>Why does that moment matter? Well, the first obvious reason is because all the ideas that don\u2019t spark that moment are bad, boring, or stolen. The more important reason, for me, is that\u2019s the moment of excitement that reminds me why I don\u2019t go to bed early or sleep in, and why I exist a year behind in every streaming show my friends are talking about. It doesn\u2019t just remind me why I\u2019m sacrificing, it makes it not even a sacrifice to give up sleep or Netflix to bring this thing \u2014 that I now believe has to exist \u2014 into the world.<\/p>"",
"date_published": "2021-12-29T17:15:00-06:00",
"date_modified": "2021-12-29T17:45:41-06:00",
"author": {
"name": "jeremy"
}
}, {
"id": "3684",
"url": "https://jeremygreenawalt.com/archive/music-for-writing",
"title": "Music for Writing",
"content_html": "" <blockquote>\n<p>\u201cI like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Tom Waits<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Today, I\u2019m taking a step away from rewrites and edits on my novel for a moment to think about the process. Thankfully, it\u2019s a fun part of the process (to me): the soundtrack for writing.<\/p>\n<p>If you\u2019ve read much on this site, you already know how important music is in\u2026 everything. <a href=\"https:\/\/jeremygreenawalt.com\/archive\/the-one-about-headphones\" title=\"The One About Headphones\">I\u2019ve written entirely too much about headphones<\/a>. <a href=\"https:\/\/jeremygreenawalt.com\/archive\/punk-rock-preacher-sample-scenes\" title=\"Punk Rock Preacher\">I\u2019m planning a novel completely set in the 90s music scene that I experienced<\/a>. Obviously, I can\u2019t imagine living without a soundtrack, and I definitely can\u2019t imagine writing without one. The reason I\u2019m making this a whole thing is because I want to consider the importance of intentionality.<\/p>\n<p>When I wrote <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/TYPO3-Templates-Jeremy-Greenawalt\/dp\/1847198406\/\" title=\"TYPO3 Templates\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">my first book<\/a>, we weren\u2019t blessed with a plethora of streaming services, but I had Pandora tuned to perfection. Instead of compiling an epic playlist or rolling the dice on pre-made stations, I had built a station based off Philip Glass, Brian Eno, and similar music that could perfectly fade into the background for marathon writing sessions. After the first few chapters, I even tried to mix it up, but I realized that the music directly affected the rhythm of my words and even my vocabulary. For the sake of a consistent voice, I was stuck with minimalist music for three hundred pages, or about a year with edits and rewrites.<\/p>\n<p>Fast-forward a decade, and I had forgotten the importance of curating the soundtrack until I was brainstorming with my friend, <a href=\"https:\/\/cdumo.com\" title=\"Chris Dumoulin\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Chris<\/a>, early in the process of starting my first novel. He reminded me I needed to create a playlist as part of the world building we were working on. Obviously, I wouldn\u2019t make it through the multi-year process of a novel without one. I immediately started working on that playlist when I got home. It evolved for a while, and it became a mixture of my imaginary score for a movie made of my novel and diegetic music (songs that my characters would listen to as part of the fictional world). If you care, you can see the results here: <a href=\"https:\/\/music.apple.com\/us\/playlist\/novel-the-grace-falls-auxiliary\/pl.u-NjmMGCKarMy\" title=\"Grace Falls Auxiliary playlist\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Apple Music playlist<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>It was a good playlist, but nothing was as enjoyable as building a playlist for my \u201cPunk Rock Preacher\u201d novel that\u2019s coming next. I created the playlist the day after I had started a [very loose] outline. I thoughtfully picked about eight hours of music that would have been listened to and played in the world that I was coopting for my novel. That one is also available (probably years before the novel) as an <a href=\"https:\/\/music.apple.com\/us\/playlist\/novel-punk-rock-pastor\/pl.u-Njm6pTKarMy\" title=\"Punk Rock Pastor playlist\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Apple Music playlist<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>So, as we\u2019ve previously discussed, I\u2019m always learning and no expert, but I do have some advice after one-and-a-half books:<\/p>\n<ol><li>Be intentional. You\u2019re not just picking music for the sheer joy of music (though, that\u2019s a good part of life). The songs you pick will affect the mood and atmosphere of your writing in real ways, so you might as well take the opportunity to use it effectively. Stephen King said he used to write everything while blasting (original) Metallica, and I think it shows in the pacing and drive of his books. If you don\u2019t want your books to be that driving, and you like adverbs, you might not want Metallica. Video game soundtracks, by the way, can be great for writing, if you don\u2019t already have something in mind.<\/li>\n\t<li>Make it enjoyable. I know I literally just said this wasn\u2019t just for your enjoyment, but writing can suck; a good soundtrack can make it better. In the case of my next novel, just hearing the playlist makes me want to write. Furthermore, if you\u2019re like me, you might realize that you\u2019re stuck with whatever you pick to keep the tone of your writing for 70,000+ words. I like Philip Glass, but I still questioned the sanity of hearing that for over a year.<\/li>\n\t<li>Let it evolve. Again, I just said I was stuck with Philip Glass for a year, but even then I threw in some new minimalist albums and inspirations over the months. I couldn\u2019t add in Beastie Boys or anything, but I could at least keep it growing over time (thanks to Pandora, at the time). My current novel playlist has evolved a little over the past year as I hear songs in the rest of my life that I think might inspire me.<\/li>\n\t<li>Know your limitations as far as lyrics or distraction. I used to only listen to instrumental because the lyrics would get in my head and mess with my words as I typed. Now, I\u2019m more comfortable with lyrics, but it still has to be songs I know enough that they can be in the background without literally adding phrases into my manuscript. Then again, Stephen King listened to Metallica without an issue, so this is about knowing your own brain.<\/li>\n\t<li>Make the listening as enjoyable as possible. This isn\u2019t about the actual music you pick, but the hardware (and possibly streaming quality). If you\u2019ve just quit your job, and you\u2019re going the starving artist route to write a novel, you obviously should not drop thousands on hi-fi equipment. However, spending money you can afford on a decent pair of headphones (or actual speakers if you have your own office) and possibly a DAC\/amp can take your music to new levels you never imagined compared to the earbuds that came free with your phone. I will reference <a href=\"https:\/\/jeremygreenawalt.com\/archive\/the-one-about-headphones\" title=\"The One About Headphones\">my own article<\/a> one more time, if you want some ideas.<\/li>\n<\/ol><p>Well, those were all of my thoughts. You are welcome to ignore them or use them as an excuse to buy some headphones and use an afternoon crafting a perfect playlist for your next novel. I\u2019m just happy to spend almost an hour without rewriting the same chapters again (and I got to listen to a great, non-novel playlist while writing this).<\/p>"",
"date_published": "2021-12-09T18:52:00-06:00",
"date_modified": "2021-12-09T19:16:47-06:00",
"author": {
"name": "jeremy"
}
}, {
"id": "3667",
"url": "https://jeremygreenawalt.com/archive/death-at-hell-house",
"title": "Death at Hell House",
"content_html": "" <p>I really wanted to churn out a quick story for Halloween this year. Actually, I wanted to have two, but <em>Tommy Goes Trick-or-Treating<\/em>will have to stay a bedtime story until I have time to write it properly. For now, I have this short story for the adults that combines my nostalgia for Hell House (a church-based haunted house I was a part of in my teens), Southern Gothic (weird traveling minister in a small town), and a little bit of <em>Tales From the Crypt<\/em> (which I grew up watching with all of its little morality tales). My caveat is this is just a quick one-off with a minimal number of drafts (3) and it\u2019s free.<\/p>\n<p>If you (like me) don\u2019t want to stare at this website for fifteen minutes reading it here, I\u2019ve also included a PDF version: <a href=\"\/assets\/site\/docs\/Death-at-Hell-House.pdf\">Death at Hell House (PDF)<\/a>.<\/p> <hr class=\"graphic-separator default\" \/> <h2>Death at Hell House<\/h2>\n<hr \/><p>Throughout the 90s, hell houses gained in popularity as haunted attractions run by local churches to illustrate the consequences of sin. Depicting scenes of moral failure, they normally ended with a chance for repentance and salvation.<\/p>\n<hr \/><p>Gabriel West stood alone and looked at his creation. It wasn\u2019t much: a few temporary buildings or trailers, linked by tunnels made of black plastic draped over wooden frames. Tomorrow night, it would be filled with volunteers from the local youth groups and hordes of local teenagers ready to walk through a haunted house turned morality play.<\/p>\n<p>Gabriel West looked the part of the itinerant preacher. The grey flecks at his temples added maturity to his youthful face, and his piercing blue eyes could still captivate a whole congregation or make a solitary parishioner feel fully understood for the first time. He could effortlessly shift his tone from quiet joking and friendliness to fire and brimstone gravitas as the situation demanded. He made it seem so natural that nobody who talked to him could ever guess how much calculated effort he put into every interaction.<\/p>\n<p>Still, the days of the big tent revivals and traveling minister were coming to a close. The big cities had mega-churches with big name preachers teaching feel-good sermons, and his mainstays, the small towns, were either going broke or becoming suburbs with their own mega-churches. It seemed the world was moving on and didn\u2019t have a place for his kind anymore, and Gabriel had thought he was at the edge of ruin when he had the idea that could give him a new path.<\/p>\n<p>He saw the ad on TV eleven months ago. Laying on a stiff mattress in a cheap motel in a miserable Texas town, the ad for a local hell house came on in the middle of the afternoon. It was being hosted by a church in the same town where he had just collected a \u201clove offering\u201d of ninety-three dollars! How could anybody afford to run TV ads in this dust bowl town? And they were charging fifteen dollars a pop to go to a church event? Gabriel remembered grabbing his few bags, packing up his car, and making the decision to check out this new attraction on the way out of town.<\/p>\n<p>Gabriel saw the future that night. He had looked at the cheap setup, volunteer actors, and financial return, and he knew what he needed to do. That same night, he had ingratiated himself with the pastor and volunteered to stay on for a few more nights, seeing how things were run all the way from the control room to the organized prayer rooms. Everybody loved Gabriel, and they were happy to keep him around. He had to sleep in his car those nights, but it was worth it to learn everything he could in those days.<\/p>\n<p>Since that night, it had been a busy year of planning his own hell house. As he traveled around to different churches, he looked at the demographics of towns and outlined his script. He sketched out sets on diner napkins and talked to pastors about the need for a \u201cHalloween ministry.\u201d That had finally landed him in Tom\u2019s Fork, TX, population 2,436, where he had spent the last few weeks recruiting local teens, building the sets, and spreading the word to churches and schools in the surrounding area. Everybody loved Gabriel.<\/p>\n<p><em>BLAM!<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Gabriel heard the door fly open and slam against the thin walls of a portable somewhere near the entrance. The last volunteer had left when it was still light, and Gabriel couldn\u2019t imagine a vandal or small-time thief making it out to the middle of the barren field unseen. Still, it had to be investigated. There were thousands of dollars of borrowed audio-visual equipment scattered throughout this ramshackle setup, and Gabriel would be on the hook for anything that happened.<\/p>\n<p>Gabriel made his way up to the entrance and saw the door to the first room wide open. Dim light spilled out and danced around inside the empty portable. The perpetrator must have turned on one of the television screens. This was obviously not a master thief, Gabriel thought as he snuck up to the door. He couldn\u2019t see any movement inside, beside some color bars flashing on the screen deep inside the room. Gabriel slipped in to look around.<\/p>\n<p><em>BLAM!<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The door slammed closed behind the pastor. He reached instinctively for the door, but the handle was stuck. Gabriel tried to let his eyes adjust, but the colors from the screen made it impossible. The corners of the room looked blacker than ever, and he remembered setting it up just this way, so it would be impossible to see the volunteer tour guides hiding in the darkness. It was a small trick that worked well, even when he knew about it. He had to turn off the screen to see anything.<\/p>\n<p>Gabriel stepped toward the glowing screen to find the power button just as it changed. Stock footage started rolling: cattle being led into a slaughterhouse, Hitler at Munich, the LA riots. The scenes got more graphic with images of actual dead bodies cut into the footage, and Gabriel couldn\u2019t remember making the introduction this unsettling.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWelcome to your personal hell house. If you make it out alive, you will be reborn.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This was not Gabriel West\u2019s voice. He had recorded all the voice-overs, but this was definitively not his voice.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEach room you enter will reveal something about yourself. Do not try to deny or avoid the lessons. You must accept all of them if you wish to be reborn, and you will not escape without being reborn.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>These were definitely not his words. Gabriel felt goosebumps involuntarily on the back of his neck, and ice ran down his spine as he tried to recognize the voice.<\/p>\n<p>As soon as the video cut to black, lights on the other side of an open door next to the screen turned on. The light was coming from the other side of the opening, which meant the string lights in the makeshift passageway to the next room must have turned on.<\/p>\n<p>Of course. Gabriel had scripted this, too. It was the cue for guides to take the tour to the first scene. He tried the door he had come through one more time to satisfy himself that it was locked or jammed. After a final attempt to work the handle in the dim light, Gabriel walked into the passageway toward the next room.<\/p>\n<hr \/><p>The hallway was short; just a few steps down and back up between trailers. The string lights reflected off the black plastic that enclosed the space. Gabriel thought about running straight through the plastic, but he remembered it was almost as thick as a tarp. He had left his knife in the truck. Still, it might be possible to find a seam.<\/p>\n<p>As Gabriel reached out to the false walls, he heard a slapping sound. He stared in disbelief. Something had hit the other side of the plastic. He paused for a moment, then he heard another slap from the other side. A second later, he heard slapping and hitting all around him. He thought he could see the plastic bulging in at different places with the hits. Another second later, and it sounded like thousands of hits all around him. It sounded like a rainstorm hitting a tent out in the open. It grew louder, and Gabriel could now swear that he saw hands pushing in from all sides.<\/p>\n<p>Gabriel noticed the open door at the end. It was just a simple door to the next trailer, but it was always closed until the scene was ready. It was a simple trick Gabriel had seen at the other hell house to allow the teenage actors to get back into place. He knew it had been closed when he first stepped into the passage, but it was open now.<\/p>\n<p>Gabriel saw a light inside the next room. He couldn\u2019t tell what awaited him inside, but he knew that the noise in the hallway was becoming deafening. The slapping had turned into pounding, and it seemed like the plastic was bulging in more and more. Any moment, those hands might be touching him through the walls, and that gave Gabriel an instinctual fear he couldn\u2019t understand. He ran forward, tripping up the steps and falling into the trailer. The door slammed shut behind him, and he didn\u2019t try the handle but breathed relief as the roar from the hallway became muted.<\/p>\n<hr \/><p>\u201cJimmy!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Gabriel heard the voice yell out. It sounded far off, but somehow confined within the room. It felt like the dimensions of the tiny trailer had changed after he entered, and he could no longer see the far wall. A sliver of light from under the door behind him was the only light.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJimmy! You get over here, boy!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The pastor recognized the voice, and the dimensions of the room were no longer important. He didn\u2019t want to find the voice. Nobody had called him Jimmy since he was a kid. More importantly, he recognized this voice immediately, and he prayed it was his imagination. His father had been dead for over thirty years, and he couldn\u2019t be hearing his voice right now.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJimmy Waylon, Junior!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The \u201cjunior\u201d always made him wince. It only reminded him and the whole town whose son he was; it was a mark from birth that it would take thousands of miles and a new name to escape.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI heard you been stealin\u2019, boy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The last words were quieter, and eerily calm. Gabriel, or Jimmy, remembered a scene so clearly now. He had been caught shoplifting from Mr. Conner\u2019s feed shop. His dad, the elder Jimmy, had beat him that night. Jimmy, Sr. was a drunk and a thief, but he took every opportunity to mete out justice in his house. All it took was a stolen candy bar to push him over the edge.<\/p>\n<p>Gabriel felt his legs go weak. He tried to steady himself against the door he had just come through, but his hand found nothing but air, and he slipped to his knees. So, what if he had stolen a candy bar? His father never worked an honest day in his life, and he had raised his son to be a grifter like him. This couldn\u2019t all be happening because he stole a candy bar.<\/p>\n<p>No.<\/p>\n<p>There was an explanation. Somebody knew his real name, and they guessed their way to a phrase that sounded like his father. It had been thirty years. His father\u2019s voice would be easy to fake. Take an East Texas drawl and add some Jack Daniel\u2019s and the rasp of a couple of thousand Marlboros. This was some elaborate prank with some lighting effects to make the room seem larger.<\/p>\n<p>Gabriel couldn\u2019t figure out that last part, but he had calmed himself down when he saw the door at the other end of the trailer open. The dimensions seemed correct again, and the opening was only about twenty feet away. He got up to his feet and hurried into the passageway before he could think about it anymore.<\/p>\n<hr \/><p>Where was the passageway? He was already in another room, somehow. The door slammed behind him. Again, it wouldn\u2019t open.<\/p>\n<p>Gabriel was facing an array of TV sets arranged into some sort of makeshift altar. He remembered this room was supposed to be some little morality story about how we worship media. It was cheesy, but it was straight from the handbook and seemed easy enough to setup. What teenager didn\u2019t make an idol out of TV and video games, right? It was like shooting fish in a barrel.<\/p>\n<p>The itinerant pastor was almost relieved with the banality of the whole scene until the TVs started turning on.<\/p>\n<p>Each one showed a scene of him preaching somewhere after he had conveniently changed his name and taken on his new identity. He saw images of himself spanning the decades. From the young firebrand to the elder prophet, he saw his shifting persona captured on different screens. Gabriel didn\u2019t even care where all the footage came from, he was reveling in seeing all the images of himself. He was only slightly disturbed to see the same people coming up and getting miraculously healed over the years.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, he had used plants every so often. What people really needed was faith, and sometimes a little demonstration helped kickstart it, right? Now all the images were just showing people coming up to put their money in the buckets. Some of the plants were used, again, to get it started, but it was mostly honest. Gabriel knew that he had grifted a little like his father, but these people had been helped. Of course they had.<\/p>\n<p>The images on the screened zoomed in on the poorest and the most helpless in the crowd as they brought forward their meager donations. Gabriel looked away and spat on the unfinished trailer floor, subconsciously trying to get the taste of lies out of his mouth as he remembered some of the things he had done.<\/p>\n<p>A door next to the TV altar opened. It was barely visible next to the glow of all the screens. Gabriel refused to move. He knew he could figure a way out of the room, and he didn\u2019t need this guided tour anymore. He defiantly stared at the empty opening and refused to move until he heard the crying.<\/p>\n<hr \/><p>Gabriel ran headlong past the screens and through the door. He recognized his son\u2019s cries. How could he not? He had thought about them enough over the years.<\/p>\n<p>The light was dim, but he saw a form in the corner, hunched over and wailing into itself. It had been years, but it was roughly the size and shape of a five-year-old boy crying into his knees as he curled up into a ball. Gabriel remembered the last time he had seen Timothy before he left; he ran forward to put a hand on the little boy; to try to calm him down and explain one more time.<\/p>\n<p>As Gabriel\u2019s hand touched the dark form, it seemed to disappear and then reform around his arm. Gabriel felt ice crawling up his arm as the darkness enveloped his hand and started creeping up. He tried to scream, but his breath was taken away by the shock of cold. His hand felt like it had been plunged into freezing water, and it felt like pins and needles.<\/p>\n<p>This could never have been Timothy. He had abandoned Timothy and his mom over a decade ago. Gabriel couldn\u2019t even remember if he had actually seen Timothy crying, or if that was just the image he replayed over and over again in his mind of how he imagined leaving his little boy.<\/p>\n<p>Gabriel had been selfish, though. He didn\u2019t want to feel tied down. He said it was the right decision at the time. He said he was too broken to be a father or husband, and he had left his family. He had already proven he couldn\u2019t be faithful.<\/p>\n<p>The shape disappeared, blood was rushing back into his hand in painful throbs, and he could make out the rest of the room.<\/p>\n<p>It was an empty scene. Just Gabriel, darkness, and whatever he had imagined in this corner. He could see the door along another wall, though. It was cracked enough for some light to stream in. There was clearly a shadow moving in the opening. Gabriel\u2019s torturer was watching, and there was a chance that he didn\u2019t know he had been spotted. The pastor rushed at the door, screaming in fury as he prepared to attack.<\/p>\n<hr \/><p>Hands grabbed at his ankles and wrists as he was thrown into the upright coffin. The lid slammed shut as soon as he was crammed inside. He could barely move. No light slipped into the small space, and he heard small hands slapping the outside and scratching at the wood.<\/p>\n<p>Gabriel remembered setting up the coffins. This was the last scene before the famous judgment scene that all hell houses were known for. The other side should open any moment, and he would be near the end. Any normal night, the next room would have a volunteer in red makeup playing the part of Satan, sitting in a foam throne as he judged the characters from earlier scenes and the audience. Then, an actor dressed like a very typical angel would rescue the audience and tell them they all had one more chance to be saved. Gabriel knew it was unrealistic, but it was a formula that worked.<\/p>\n<p>The pastor waited for the door to open and reveal his judge. He had seen some bad things he had done, he felt bad, and he was ready to say as much to whoever was doing this.<\/p>\n<p>The door didn\u2019t open. Nothing happened. He was still in darkness. Gabriel tried to find the secret latch to open the door, but his hand only found smooth wood in front of him. He finally started pounding on the wall to try to break through.<\/p>\n<hr \/><p>Cheers went up in the hell house control room. The small group assembled had been tracking the exploits of Gabriel West since he had stolen almost fifty thousand dollars from their small church\u2019s building campaign two years ago. They had done background checks to find out his original name and gone to different towns, digging up random videos of him preaching at various places. Finally, they had tracked down some of the plants he used in the audience and threatened to turn them over to the police until they told them whatever they knew about his operation.<\/p>\n<p>When they saw the announcement about his hell house, they thanked God for the opportunity to set things right. It had been simple to approach the church in Tom\u2019s Fork and show them the evidence they had collected. With the help of some volunteers, they had rigged up the whole place with some basic lighting tricks and hidden speakers that could trick a guilty man once he was lonely enough. All they needed was his confession.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cConfess,\u201d one of the men growled into the microphone and watched Gabriel in the monitors.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhere\u2019s my boy? I saw him!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The men looked at each other in confusion. They didn\u2019t know about any boy, but they expected his mind to have added its own tricks after they started. Knowing the amateurish theater tricks might not be effective, the man at the microphone had joked about slipping some LSD into his Thermos. He quickly shook his head to assure everyone he hadn\u2019t followed through on the joke. They knew they wanted a lucid confession.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou need to confess, Gabriel West. Confess and repent of your sins!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The pastor started thrashing on the screen and screaming in horror.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI feel you grabbing me! I feel all your hands!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>More confused looks passed between the men in the control room. It did kind of look like there were other forms on the screen, but it was so dark it was hard to tell what was going on as the pastor banged on the walls.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cConfess your deepest sins and be forgiven.\u201d After a pause, they decided to go for the confession they really needed. \u201cConfess your sins from Cedar Falls!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The pastor moved around more frantically, and the men hoped again that they hadn\u2019t gone too far.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t even remember her name!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Did he think this was about a one-night stand in their small town? They needed him to focus.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat did you do at the church, Gabriel?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI met her there! She was passing through, and I knew she wouldn\u2019t be missed!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The man at the microphone stopped and looked at the others in the room. What was he talking about?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cConfess what you did.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI burned the body like the others!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow\u2014 how many others, pastor?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The voice going into the microphone was no longer growling or disguised as anything but human, but the pastor didn\u2019t seem to notice. Gabriel started to laugh without humor, like a hyena bragging about its latest find.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have no idea! I honestly couldn\u2019t tell you! I never killed anyone that people would miss, and I never really kept count. More than dozens, for sure. Maybe hundreds were thrown in cheap boxes like this and burned alive! If you want to know so bad, you should let me out before whatever\u2019s in here kills me! After that, only God can help you!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The men in the control room stared at the monitor. Gabriel West no longer looked like the itinerant preacher he pretended to be. Whether through a trick of the night vision or just a subconscious reaction, every one in the room believed they could see the real man in the monitor for the first time. To a man, they were all horrified they hadn\u2019t recognized this monster for what he was before.<\/p>\n<p>The man at the microphone quickly made sure he was muted before making sure he had everyone in the room\u2019s attention. \u201cIf one of you isn\u2019t calling 9-1-1 right now, we\u2019re all going to hell!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m dialing,\u201d one of the other men responded before his face went blank. \u201cWhat\u2019s wrong with the camera?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The pastor\u2019s voice broke through the speakers as the cameras in the coffin started cutting in and out. It sounded like he tried to form words before the speakers cut out as well. At the same time, all the men heard his screams without need of microphones or monitors.<\/p>\n<p>Abandoning all procedure, the leader of the posse ran from the control room to see the coffins firsthand. He saw the flames leaping higher than the nearby temporary buildings, and he was surprised to see the fire was completely contained as he got closer. The screams filled the air at the same time, until the sirens were cutting through the silent night. They swore they heard his screaming the whole time they fought the fire, but the investigators insisted that was impossible; the body they recovered was so distorted that it had to have burned too fast and hot for him to have lived more than a few moments.<\/p>\n<p>Nobody from the control room who saw the body laying in the grass that night said what they saw on the security monitors moments before they cut out. They didn\u2019t say that thing on the grass was precisely what they saw screaming and cursing before the flames broke out, and they definitely didn\u2019t say that deformed animal was simply what Jimmy Waylon, Junior, had become behind the facade of Gabriel West.<\/p>"",
"date_published": "2021-10-28T06:26:00-05:00",
"date_modified": "2021-10-29T17:33:10-05:00",
"author": {
"name": "jeremy"
}
}, {
"id": "3377",
"url": "https://jeremygreenawalt.com/archive/little-tommys-slumber-party",
"title": "Little Tommy’s Slumber Party",
"content_html": "" <p>After writing more of my novel and yet another terrifying short story, I thought it was time to give my son another bedtime story. This might also have been motivated by his resistance to going to bed on time, and his wonderful ideas to do anything but go to sleep.<\/p> <hr class=\"graphic-separator default\" \/> <p>When Little Tommy was six years old, he got a pet dragon from his dad. The dragon\u2019s name was Eustace, and he was Tommy\u2019s very best friend. They watched cartoons together, they played superheroes and robots together, and they ate blueberry pancakes together.<\/p>\n<p>One night, Tommy asked his parents if he could sleep outside with Eustace. Tommy begged. He said that it was summer, and he had no school. He said Eustace\u2019s wings could be very comfy. Tommy said he hated bedtime, but a slumber party with his best friend would make it all better. <\/p>\n<p>Tommy\u2019s mom was very skeptical, but his dad was more easily convinced. Eustace had been his dad\u2019s dragon before he was Tommy\u2019s, and he remembered sleeping outside with the dragon when he was camping. Tommy\u2019s parents came to a decision together. Mom said he could do it, but dad would have to make sure Tommy went to sleep.<\/p>\n<p>As soon as they told him the plan, Tommy grabbed his sleeping bag and his pillow. He ran out to give Eustace the good news. Eustace just thumped his tail against a tree to show his approval of the idea.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCan I sleep out here with you, Eustace?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Thump. Thump.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll night! We\u2019ll have a slumber party!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Thump. Tha-thump.<\/p>\n<p>Tommy\u2019s dad warned him that he still needed to go to sleep when it got dark, and Tommy said he understood. Tommy said he would go right to sleep after his dad told him two stories.<\/p>\n<p>Tommy\u2019s dad made sure he was comfy with his pillow and sleeping bag, then he told him a magical story about Tommy, Eustace, and a pancake tree they found in the forest.<\/p>\n<p>Tommy loved the story and asked for one more. This time, his dad told him a story about superheroes, bad guys, and a time machine. He even threw in a few poop jokes just to make sure Tommy was listening.<\/p>\n<p>That story made Tommy\u2019s sides hurt, he was laughing so much, but he said it left Eustace out. The dragon was closing his eyes and didn\u2019t seem to mind, but Tommy begged for another story.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m sorry, but that was two stories,\u201d his dad said. \u201cYou can have another story tomorrow morning.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut I need two more! Two about Eustace!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo, you need to sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEustace can\u2019t sleep without another story. What\u2019s one more story?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The big dragon kept his eyes closed and didn\u2019t help Tommy at all. Tommy changed tactics.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOkay, I can go to sleep after I get some water.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Tommy\u2019s dad had already planned ahead, and he pulled a fresh water bottle from behind his back.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHere you go, Tommy. I\u2019ll see you in the morning.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>His dad went inside and left Tommy with a final hug and a kiss for Eustace. Tommy took a couple of sips before laying his head down and trying to sleep.<\/p>\n<p>Almost an hour later, Tommy\u2019s parents heard banging in the kitchen, and his dad stumbled out to find Tommy holding a mixing bowl and a spatula.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat are you doing?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEustace wants blueberry pancake.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRight now?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOf course, right now!\u201d Tommy declared.<\/p>\n<p>Both father and son looked out the big windows to the backyard to see his pet dragon fast asleep.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTommy, you need to let him sleep, and it\u2019s well past your bedtime.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPancakes in the morning?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf I don\u2019t see or hear you again, I will make pancakes for the whole family. You can help.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOkay.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Tommy put his bowl and spatula back and padded out to lay down with Eustace. He laid back down and tried really hard to sleep until he had another idea.<\/p>\n<p>Tommy decided that Eustace wanted to play. He quietly gathered his favorite action figures and brought them outside. He nudged and poked the dragon awake to play with him.<\/p>\n<p>Tommy\u2019s dad saw this, but decided he was too tired to get involved. He watched Tommy prod the sleeping dragon, and he watched Eustace try to push the little boy away. The more Tommy poked the big dragon, the more Eustace tried to make Tommy lay down under his big wings. Tommy\u2019s dad decided that they would have to figure it out, and he went back to bed.<br \/><\/p> <hr class=\"graphic-separator default\" \/> <p>The next morning, Tommy\u2019s dad went looking for Tommy. It was late, but Eustace was still hard asleep outside. His dad checked around Eustace, but he saw no signs of a little boy. Tommy\u2019s dad went back inside to find Tommy asleep in his bed. He prodded Tommy awake.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow was your slumber party, buddy?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t think dragons like little boy slumber parties. He just wanted to sleep, and he got a little grumpy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s okay. I think a big plate of blueberry pancakes will make it all better. You still ready to help me?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Tommy crawled slowly out of bed, padded his way into the kitchen, and helped his dad start stirring the batter. By the time the pancakes were coming off the griddle, Eustace was thumping his tail against the tree again to show his happiness. Tommy knew that all was forgiven, and he started thinking about the next slumber party he would have with his dragon.<\/p>"",
"date_published": "2021-09-27T21:53:00-05:00",
"date_modified": "2021-09-28T21:29:25-05:00",
"author": {
"name": "jeremy"
}
}, {
"id": "3296",
"url": "https://jeremygreenawalt.com/archive/dreamer",
"title": "Dreamer - A Short Story",
"content_html": "" <p>Last week, I took a break from struggling through chapter rewrites for my first novel to write a short story\u2026 about a first-time novelist struggling with his writing. Like a lot of my ideas, it starts semi-autobiographical and goes into a worst-case scenario of horror and nightmares (which is oddly cathartic). My last short story (which will be published in the near future) dealt with fatherhood, and I guess this one deals with the responsibilities of a creative.<\/p>\n<p>The story does not lend itself to reading on a website (turning pages is half the fun), so I\u2019ve decided to create PDF and ePub versions to download and share. Thanks!<\/p>\n \n<ul><li><a href=\"\/assets\/site\/docs\/Dreamer.pdf\">Dreamer (PDF)<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"\/assets\/site\/docs\/Dreamer.epub\">Dreamer (ePub)<\/a><\/li><\/ul>"",
"date_published": "2021-08-16T05:49:00-05:00",
"date_modified": "2021-08-17T06:57:49-05:00",
"author": {
"name": "jeremy"
}
}, {
"id": "3201",
"url": "https://jeremygreenawalt.com/archive/the-one-about-headphones",
"title": "The One About Headphones",
"content_html": "" <p>I am currently obsessing over phrases and words in rewrites of my first novel, and I thought it would be good to take a break to talk about a key part of the writing process that I actually feel qualified to speak to: music. Specifically, I can wax poetic about gear like headphones (and earbuds) instead of deciding how to handle a complicated character introduction. When everything else is a struggle, I still have my music.<\/p>\n<p>I grew up with music always around me. My dad was a professional musician and voracious lover of music of all genres, and my mom was a singer (albeit, with a narrower scope of music she loved). Though the music they introduced me to was different, it was still constant, and I grew up thinking that everybody had a soundtrack to their lives. We would clean, read, work, and even sleep to music. By the time I was a teenager, I would fall asleep most nights with hardcore\/metal in my headphones or earbuds as I peacefully drifted off (true story, and I can\u2019t understand it today).<\/p>\n<p>As I\u2019ve gotten older, I\u2019ve had to remind myself sometimes about the importance of music (though I remember as soon as I hear it), but the new magic of iPhones, wireless earbuds, and speakers connected to every room in the house mean that it\u2019s getting easier than ever. There is no excuse for ever working, or heaven forbid writing, without a soundtrack to keep the keys typing (and if you say that\u2019s impossible, I would at least recommend something like Philip Glass or the <em>Her<\/em> soundtrack).<\/p>\n<p>All of this brings me to my \u201cshort\u201d list of writing\/working headphones.<br \/><\/p>\n <hr class=\"graphic-separator default\" \/> <h2>Current Rotation<\/h2>\n<h3>Ultrasone Pro 1480i<\/h3>\n<p>My most recent acquisition, these are my first open-backed headphones since I used to listen to my dad\u2019s old Sennheisers as a teenager. If you don\u2019t know, open-backed is (generally) the opposite of close-backed or \u201csealed\u201d headphones (which keep out outside noise and also keep your music in). They\u2019re like the early, cheap headphones that allowed your neighbors to hear exactly what you were listening to while only blocking out the rest of the world if you turned them up even louder (which is bad). This makes them impractical for a lot of situations unless you happen to have your own office (which I do at home), but it also means that they sound more like having perfectly tuned loudspeakers playing next to your ears; this experience is both amazing for sound quality and actually just refreshing to kind of \u201creintegrate\u201d the rest of the small noises in the world back into your music\u2014listening experience. When I wear them, I feel like I\u2019m just adding music to the world around me, and they happen to sound amazing.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Ultrasone-Surround-Professional-Open-Back-Headphones\/dp\/B07JJZ32M7\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Amazon (non-affiliate link)<\/a><br \/><\/p>\n<h3>Audio-Technica ATH-M50x<\/h3>\n<p>Close-backed (so they block out the world), but with no active noise-cancelling, these were the headphones that brought me back into buying headphones \u201cjust for the music.\u201d What I mean is that I had perfectly good wireless headphones that were solid workhorses and some great wired in-ears that were practical and sounded good, but I still bought these for no reason but the desire for a better listening experience when I could sit back and listen to music. They got me back into the world of audio for audio\u2019s sake, and they made me happy. I still use them when my three-year-old isn\u2019t running around with them on his head, because I\u2019m already raising another audiophile.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Audio-Technica-ATH-M50x-Professional-Monitor-Headphones\/dp\/B00HVLUR86\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Amazon (non-affiliate link)<\/a><\/p>\n<h3>Apple AirPods Pro<\/h3>\n<p>I resisted the original AirPods strongly at first. I didn\u2019t need them. I knew they wouldn\u2019t sound as good as my other options, and I couldn\u2019t see the point in them. Then, they came out, and I kept hearing people I respected say how they offered a whole new experience, and I got curious. Those people turned out to be right, because they were life-changing. For me, the combination of the tiny case, earbuds light enough to forget about, and the simple pairing experience, all came together to providing something like a soundtrack for life again. There was no reason to not just have them in almost all the time (except when you\u2019re talking to people because I\u2019m still Generation X, and we don\u2019t do that). Well, AirPods Pro were changing again because they were just all of that plus transparency mode so, like my open-backed headphones, you could wear them around and hear your music integrated into the rest of the world without cutting it off. Of course, the actual noise-cancellation is also good enough that you can still block out the rest of the world with a simple squeeze on the earbud.<a href=\"https:\/\/www.apple.com\/airpods-pro\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><br \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.apple.com\/airpods-pro\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Apple<\/a><\/p> <hr class=\"graphic-separator default\" \/> <h2>Honorable Mentions and Related Gear<\/h2>\n<ul><li><strong>Bose QC35<\/strong> \u2014 My wife got these for me about four years ago, and they still live up at my \u201creal\u201d office. They are great at blocking out the rest of the world, while still being wireless and sounding good for most music (or movies).<\/li><li><strong>KZ ZSN Pro HiFi<\/strong> \u2014 Commonly referred to as \u201cChifi,\u201d my buddy Chris introduced me to the world of inexpensive Chinese in-ear monitors that you can buy on Amazon. For under $30, they sound at least as good as my lower-range Ultimate Ears sounded years ago (and those cost a couple of hundred bucks).<\/li><li><strong>Sonos speakers<\/strong> \u2014 Not headphones, I know, but I convinced my wife to let me get Sonos speakers for the rooms instead of wiring everything when we moved into a new house. She\u2019s now a convert, and we love playing our music through the whole house when we\u2019re cleaning, hosting, or just hanging out.<\/li><li><strong>Schiit Fulla DAC\/Amp<\/strong> \u2014 My desktop driver for all my wired headphones, this takes the digital feed from my computer, converts it to analog (hence, Digital-to-Analog Converter), and amplifies it for my headphones. It brings a little more depth and a lot of power to the table to make my listening experience just that much better. If you are happy now listening to the audio straight from your computer, I would recommend never A\/B testing a good DAC\/Amp. It will ruin you.<\/li><\/ul>"",
"date_published": "2021-05-17T08:31:00-05:00",
"date_modified": "2021-10-28T06:30:58-05:00",
"author": {
"name": "jeremy"
}
}, {
"id": "3123",
"url": "https://jeremygreenawalt.com/archive/two-sentences",
"title": "Two Sentences",
"content_html": "" <figure>\n <picture class=\"lazyload\">\n <source srcset=\"\/assets\/site\/inline_images\/_2400xAUTO_crop_center-center_none\/red_pen.jpg\" media=\"(min-width: 800px)\">\n <source srcset=\"\/assets\/site\/inline_images\/_1600xAUTO_crop_center-center_none\/red_pen.jpg\" media=\"(min-width: 600px)\">\n <source srcset=\"\/assets\/site\/inline_images\/_1200xAUTO_crop_center-center_none\/red_pen.jpg\" media=\"(min-width: 480px)\">\n <source srcset=\"\/assets\/site\/inline_images\/_960xAUTO_crop_center-center_none\/red_pen.jpg\" media=\"(min-width: 320px)\">\n <source srcset=\"\/assets\/site\/inline_images\/_640xAUTO_crop_center-center_none\/red_pen.jpg\" media=\"(min-width: 5px)\">\n <img src=\"\/assets\/site\/inline_images\/_preload\/red_pen.jpg\" \/>\n <\/picture>\n <\/figure>\n <p>This morning I officially started the rewrite of my first novel (after a full read-through and a <em>lot<\/em> of red ink). I had already updated the outline and moved some things around, I had plenty of notes lined up, and I was ready to dive into the words. I was ready to get cranking, and I spent about two hours in that first session. After those two hours, I was able to proudly look at the two sentences I had produced.<\/p>\n<p>Technically, the first note I had (besides the title being \u201c<em>expletive<\/em> awful\u201d) was about the first sentence feeling flat. So, I worked on that sentence, which led me to rewrite the second sentence. So, these were very important sentences, and changing them alters the first point-of-view we encounter, adds a new promise for the readers, and gives an entirely new feeling for the beginning of the book (and the rest of the words after that).<\/p>\n<p>After those sweat and hours, I was able to proudly say that I had produced two good sentences. Well, the first sentence is good, and the second one will probably be good after another hour or so.<\/p>\n<p>So, we\u2019re no longer opening with this:<\/p>\n<blockquote>It was hot the night I died.<\/blockquote>\n<p>We are now opening with this:<\/p>\n<blockquote>The night the demon arrived was in the middle of one of the hottest Augusts on record in the small town of Providence, TX.<\/blockquote>"",
"date_published": "2021-04-07T06:37:00-05:00",
"date_modified": "2021-05-17T08:38:49-05:00",
"author": {
"name": "jeremy"
}
}, {
"id": "3077",
"url": "https://jeremygreenawalt.com/archive/punk-rock-preacher-sample-scenes",
"title": "Punk Rock Preacher - Sample Scenes",
"content_html": "" <figure class=\"inline-image\">\n <picture>\n <img src=\"\/assets\/site\/inline_images\/_inlineImage\/5F042ED8-36A1-496A-B192-B6FCD937DA1E.jpeg\" title=\"Me at 18\" \/>\n <\/picture>\n <\/figure>\n <p>I\u2019m working on a new novel set in the 90s Christian punk\/hardcore scene (which I was heavily involved in), and I put together a few example scenes just for myself to help establish the language and feeling I want to use. In full disclosure, I\u2019m just posting them here to keep myself accountable as I keep writing what may be a much longer and harder to write novel.<\/p> <hr class=\"graphic-separator default\" \/> <p>When the lead singer raised his arm on the stage, the house lights switched off on command. In the complete blackness, Caleb heard the growling guitar and bass start thrumming together and the entire room started moving together in anticipation of violent ecstasy. The mosh pit was no longer contained to a small circle, and it took only one guttural scream from the lead singer to launch the entire room into thrashing momentum. Caleb felt the big guy in front of him come flying back, and he pushed back even as he slid backward. From behind him, hands pushed him even forward, and he felt the whole room exploding in the euphoric experience as they all became one mass of arms and legs; pushing and pulling for survival, kicking and punching to feel alive. His parents could never understand this, and his old pastor could only shake his head when he tried to explain it, but this was his church. This was where Caleb finally belonged.<\/p> <hr class=\"graphic-separator default\" \/> <p>As the stage lights came up, the man they called Punk Rock Preacher stood at the edge of the stage. He had been one of them, but now he seemed like something more. The light fell on only him, and disappeared to nothingness where the band was still chugging and thrashing behind him. His bald head glistened in the light with fresh sweat from the mosh pit, and there was blood on his tattoos where his flailing arms must have crashed into other moshers. His voice was quiet, almost a whisper, but it only made every one in attendance strain more to hear it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor I am calling to you to start a new thing. You are to be alive in me, and dead to the world.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He paused as he looked out across the dark room, and everyone felt that his eyes were landing on them and piercing into their own thoughts.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe old religion is dead. It has failed us, but God has never failed us. He is calling out to each of us. He calls out to you, and He calls out to me, because I still fail him every day and crawl back to Him every night.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe did not save me to teach you religion, but to show you what it is to be fully alive in Him. Are you ready to be alive only in Him? Are you?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He screamed the last words as the lights came up to hit the band. He turned around and dove backward into the upraised arms of the crowd and surfed across the throng. Arms coming up unconsciously into a Christ-like pose, he rode back and forth across the crowd as they passed him around until he finally ended up at the front of the stage. With a push, a few of the bigger security men landed him back on the stage, and he just smiled out at the crowd as the lead singer stepped forward to start the song. The preacher laid hands on the singer, anointing him to scream the truth to his people, and stepped out of the light to the side of the stage.<\/p>"",
"date_published": "2021-03-16T06:45:00-05:00",
"date_modified": "2021-10-11T21:24:03-05:00",
"author": {
"name": "jeremy"
}
}, {
"id": "3040",
"url": "https://jeremygreenawalt.com/archive/little-tommy-and-the-big-parade",
"title": "Little Tommy and the Big Parade",
"content_html": "" <p>I've been wanting to write something to read to my three-year-old son at night, and I feel I owed it to him after he inspired a terrifying short story (to be published later). As it happens, my wife is also a huge fan of this story, and I'm sure there will be sequels after my son tells me what other messes Tommy and Eustace can get up to. This was so fun, maybe I'll just write about little boys and dragons from now on.<\/p> <hr class=\"graphic-separator default\" \/> <p>Little Tommy had a life much like yours. He played with action figures of his favorite superheroes. He watched cartoons. He even had a room just like the room you\u2019re sitting in right now. The only real difference was the dragons.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, these dragons didn\u2019t breathe fire. That was just something made up by people who have never met a real dragon. The very real dragons in Tommy\u2019s world just had very stinky breath that they could also blow really hard. If they burped near your campfire or grill, their breath might catch on fire a little, but it was never all that impressive.<\/p>\n<p>The rest of what you know about dragons is probably correct, though. They were roughly the size of a small house. They could fly with giant wings that they kept folded flat against their back. And, of course, they mostly ate blueberry pancakes.<\/p>\n<p>The other important difference between you and Tommy is that he had his own dragon. It had been his grandfather\u2019s dragon when he was a little boy, and dragons live so long that it had been passed down to Tommy\u2019s dad when he was a boy. Tommy\u2019s dad no longer had use for a dragon when he got older, and he felt awkward flying him to the office. So, when Tommy turned six years old, the dragon became his responsibility. Tommy\u2019s mom, who had never known a dragon until meeting Tommy\u2019s dad, decided she was surprisingly okay with this.<\/p>\n<p>Tommy, on the other hand, was much more than okay. None of his friends had dragons, and he couldn\u2019t imagine anything more dull than a dragon-less childhood. He loved his dragon and rushed home from school every day to feed him a stack of blueberry pancakes and fly him over the town where they all lived. He even loved the weird name his grandfather had given him as a boy: Eustace. It was a reference his dad said he would get later.<\/p>\n<p>Another way that Tommy\u2019s world was probably like yours was that his town had parades for big events. In fact, they loved parades. They had parades for Thanksgiving, Christmas, starting school, ending school, and anything else they wanted to mark as special. It was before one of these parades, the End of School March, that Tommy\u2019s teacher, Ms. Hope, asked him if he would like to lead the parade with Eustace.<\/p>\n<p>As I already mentioned, despite dragons being very real, most little boys did not have their own. It would be like owning an elephant \u2014 if your elephant could fly and ate blueberry pancakes. So, of course Tommy was very excited to show off Eustace in the big parade. He promised Ms. Hope to give Eustace a whole tin of breath mints, and he decided not to mention the fact that dragons are a little slow and awkward when walking. They were really made to fly, you know, but Tommy knew he couldn\u2019t lead the parade from up in the sky.<\/p>\n<p>When he got home to tell them the good news, his parents were a little more concerned. His dad pointed out again how slow and awkward Eustace would be on the ground, and he worried about him holding up the parade or tripping and flattening cars on Main Street. His mom thought the whole idea sounded bizarre and was suddenly worried about flattened cars, since it had come up. Eustace seemed to love the idea, though, and thudded his huge tail on the ground until all the apples and a very surprised bluebird fell out of a nearby tree.<\/p>\n<p>After Tommy promised to clean his room, do the dishes by himself for a month, and practice walking Eustace, his parents finally said it was okay. Tommy flew Eustace out to a field outside of town and started practicing that very afternoon. When he came home, he cleaned his room and made all the dishes sparkle after telling his parents how well Eustace had walked around in the field.<\/p>\n<p>It was just a few weeks later, when the big day came. Tommy had been practicing with Eustace every day, and they were both very excited. They flew to the football field behind his school where the parade was set to start. As he flew over the school, Tommy saw all his friends and teachers look up at him from where they were preparing, and he heard the cheers from his classmates as he waved at them from Eustace\u2019s back.<\/p>\n<p>When she saw him come in to land, Ms. Hope started to worry about how much big a dragon actually was. She realized she had only seen him high in the sky, and she wondered if this pet, roughly the size of a small house, would even fit down Main Street. She didn\u2019t even think about flattened cars, but that would have worried too. Her fears about Tommy being able to control such a large animal disappeared, at least, when she watched Eustace come in for the softest of landings right in front of the marching band. The ground barely even shook, and Tommy was very proud.<\/p>\n<p>As soon as the band started playing one of their marching songs, Tommy patted his dragon\u2019s scales, and they started leading the parade toward Main Street. As the big drums boomed and the tubas oom-pahed, Eustace plodded along with the beat. Tommy was relieved to see that Main Street had been cleared to make way for the large dragon. He at least didn\u2019t have to worry about flattening any cars today. As they made their way onto the street, he started to relax and waved at all the people coming out to the sidewalk to cheer them on.<\/p>\n<p>Tommy felt so good going down Main Street that he reached into his bag to see what his mom had packed him to eat. He knew it was early for lunch, but riding his dragon always made him hungry. When he pulled out the perfectly wrapped peanut butter and jelly sandwich, his stomach started to grumble. He was so high up, nobody would see him snacking, and his mouth watered a little.<\/p>\n<p>Before you blame Tommy for what happened next, I feel I should tell you that Tommy ate on Eustace\u2019s back almost every day. Dragons are so graceful and smooth in the air that it would be foolish not to have a snack on a lazy afternoon high above the town. It\u2019s simply natural when you\u2019re flying as Tommy usually is, and he didn\u2019t know how different it would be on the ground.<\/p>\n<p>As soon as Tommy tried to bite down on the sandwich, he realized it\u2019s a lot harder to eat on a marching dragon. The big legs went up and down, and the huge back swayed side to side, with the rhythm of the music. Tommy missed his mouth twice before he saw the sandwich fly right out of his hand and toward the ground.<\/p>\n<p>Eustace had no idea that Tommy had dropped his lunch, and he was definitely not prepared to step on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. As his back foot squished down on the snack, jelly squirted between his toes. Eustace was very confused. Like Tommy\u2019s dad had warned him, dragons are already awkward with their feet on the ground, and the feeling of jelly between your toes would fluster anybody.<\/p>\n<p>As soon as Eustace felt the sticky goo ooze between his toes, he tried to lift his back leg up to inspect it. He leaned way over to his non-jellied side where the onlookers shrieked to avoid being squished. The noise shocked Eustace, and he leaned back the other way toward the smashed sandwich. His big foot came back down to the ground and slipped on the fresh jelly stain. The ground shook, Eustace\u2019s foot slipped out from under him, and Tommy held on as hard as he could \u2014 images of flattened cars and splatted marching bands going through his head.<\/p>\n<p>Eustace skidded and teetered back and forth and back and forth until, eventually, he leaned\u2026 leaned\u2026 and took off into the sky more gracefully than any parade leader before or since. The whole town watched him climb high into the sky with Tommy on his back. As their gaze came back to earth, they all saw the smashed sandwich in front of the frozen marching band. Despite all the swaying and shaking, the sandwich was the only thing damaged, and Tommy could hear the cheers and music start again as he and Eustace led the parade the rest of the way from high over the buildings.<\/p>\n<p>Tommy and Eustace had many more adventures for years to come, but that was the last time Tommy tried to walk his dragon down Main Street.<\/p>"",
"date_published": "2021-03-09T06:30:00-06:00",
"date_modified": "2021-08-18T05:37:22-05:00",
"author": {
"name": "jeremy"
}
}, {
"id": "2946",
"url": "https://jeremygreenawalt.com/archive/my-ipad-pro-is-my-favorite-writing-tool",
"title": "My iPad Pro is My Favorite Writing Tool",
"content_html": "" <p>I have been thinking a lot about how I use my iPad for writing because I don\u2019t have my iPad right now. After an incident with my son and some hot chocolate, it stopped charging, and I had to send it home to Cupertino to get fixed, and I can now recognize how much I have come to rely on it as a writing device.<\/p>\n<p>I was always an iPad early adopter. My friends and I got the original iPad when we were still working on iOS apps and webapps for mobile devices, and we were in line to get the first ones available at SXSW in Austin. Since the first one, I moved to an iPad Mini, the original (gigantic) iPad Pro, the smaller iPad Pro, and finally the iPad Pro 11\u201d. Along the way it went from a fun diversion, to my constant 2nd device, to my primary device for everything except my day job (which is done on a company-issued 2020 MacBook Pro). In the last six months, though, the iPad most importantly became my main writing computer.<\/p>\n<p>With few exceptions, I wrote every blog entry since the relaunch and my entire novel manuscript on my iPad Pro either early in the morning or late at night. It became my safe space when I needed to be away from development or client problems. More importantly, it was a context switch that I could make by intentionally <em>not<\/em> grabbing my work computer when I shouldn\u2019t be working on that stuff. I could set it on top of my mechanical \u201ctypewriter\u201d keyboard (<a href=\"https:\/\/jeremygreenawalt.com\/archive\/a-short-dissertation-on-mechanical-keyboards\" title=\"A Short Dissertation on Mechanical Keyboards\">see my blog article about it<\/a>), plug in my headphones, and the iPad became a sheet of paper showing only my words with no other distractions.<\/p>\n<p>So, now I\u2019m writing this on my MacBook Pro and wanting to list out some of the great things about writing on an iPad:<\/p>\n<ul><li><strong>It\u2019s a giant screen.<\/strong> It becomes whatever app is open. It can be a big piece of paper when I have Ulysses open for writing, a place to read PDF versions of my story without distraction, a high-res comic book with Comixology for relaxing, or a big screen showing Netflix on my porch for turning my brain off. It adapts to whatever is on the screen without any opinions about being a computer or a piece of paper.<\/li>\n\t<li><strong>I can easily use any of my keyboards.<\/strong> I have a mechanical keyboard for my laptop that I use all day, but that required being at my desk with an external monitor and being in \u201cwork mode.\u201d My iPad follows me out to the porch, where I can quickly attach any of my keyboards and get to work.<\/li>\n\t<li><strong>The pencil is magical.<\/strong> The ability to edit a PDF just like it was printed out with all of my scrawled handwriting and big highlighter strokes is something I can\u2019t replicate on MacBook Pro of iPhone (I got a tiny stylus for my phone to survive the past week, and it\u2019s not even close).<\/li>\n\t<li><strong>It gives me a context switch.<\/strong> This one is personal to my setup, I know, but the ability to leave my computer behind at my desk and switch to \u201cwriter mode\u201d whenever I grab my iPad has been a survival technique while writing for hours a day before and after a very busy workday.<\/li>\n<\/ul><p>So, I\u2019ve already seen that Apple is about to send back my replacement, and I\u2019m overjoyed, but I had to take a few minutes to sing the praises of my iPad in its absence. I just hope that other people can have a writing tool they appreciate this much.<\/p>"",
"date_published": "2021-03-02T07:00:00-06:00",
"date_modified": "2021-05-17T08:37:57-05:00",
"author": {
"name": "jeremy"
}
}, {
"id": "2878",
"url": "https://jeremygreenawalt.com/archive/the-push",
"title": "The Push",
"content_html": "" <blockquote>\u201cKeep buggering on.\u201d<br \/><br \/>\u2014 Winston Churchill, said at the start of each day and the end of phone conversations\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>This weekend, I finished the rough draft of my first novel. I\u2019m still not sure what exactly to do at this point. I\u2019m going to show it to some writer friends, let my wife read it, and eventually pick it back up again to do major revisions and rewrites. For now, I\u2019m just going to step away from it and write a bit here about \u201cthe push.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For the last month, I\u2019ve been going back through the whole book from the beginning, chapter by chapter, to add all the pieces I missed or didn\u2019t narrate well the first time, and \u201cthe push\u201d was the last few weeks when I was counting down instead of up as I looked at my word count and chapters left. I started writing in the morning <em>and<\/em> the evening and every nap time my son enjoyed on the weekends. When I \u201cfound\u201d a \u201cmissing\u201d chapter (meaning a chapter I realized that I should have written), or expanded a short chapter to an epic one, I used that to propel me to keep writing as much as possible until I slammed headfirst into another roadblock. The next day, that roadblock would hopefully seem easier to navigate around, and I\u2019d use any energy left to write until I was out of time again.<\/p>\n<p>This was my first novel, but this wasn\u2019t my first big push. I\u2019ve experienced it right before every website I\u2019ve launched, in the final weeks of my non-fiction book, and even the last time I moved.<sup><a href=\"#footnote_1\" class=\"footnote-link\">1<\/a><\/sup> I at least learned a few things from all of them that I\u2019m recording for my future self and anybody else who\u2019s interested. These are my current thoughts, in no particular order:<\/p>\n<ol><li><strong>Keep track of progress with stats.<\/strong> When you\u2019re in the weeds of a big project, it may not be possible or even helpful to look at your stats. Knowing that you have 60,000 more words to write out of a completely theoretical 70,000 is not the most motivating thing,<sup><a href=\"#footnote_2\" class=\"footnote-link\">2<\/a><\/sup> and anybody who says they know the exact amount of work they have left near the middle of a large website launch is lying or delusional. Near the end, though, it\u2019s possible and helpful. You can see the end right there, but you need to have markers, so you don\u2019t get discouraged. Now is the time to countdown to the real word count or chapter number you expect, or you can see how many <em>real<\/em> issues are left to fix before launch.<\/li>\n\t<li><strong>Progress gets even less linear than before.<\/strong> In the middle of the project, progress is not happening in a linear fashion, but that\u2019s easy to accept. You\u2019re taking a few days to work on an outline or rethink something, but you\u2019re also not staring at your stats at the end of every day, so that feels okay. This is also where finishing a book or a big redesign project aren\u2019t exactly like running a marathon, unless your marathon has literal roadblocks and quicksand traps set up for the last two miles. While finishing the writing, I had days that I burned through a few thousand words in an hour discovering a chapter that didn\u2019t even exist, but I also had days that I spent four hours to add a couple of hundred words and write myself out of a mistake I hadn\u2019t noticed before. In my day job, I spent a whole week on an image cropping tool that I still don\u2019t like, and it felt like all progress had come to a halt. The key, though, was recognizing that the final push has always, and will always, have these moments. You just have to \u201ckeep buggering on,\u201d and eventually, you\u2019ll either find a smooth section again or at least crawl across the finish line.<sup><a href=\"#footnote_3\" class=\"footnote-link\">3<\/a><\/sup><\/li>\n\t<li><strong>It\u2019s okay to reprioritize.<\/strong> Yeah, I stopped writing much on my blog (even though writing on my blog was the big goal that ended up starting my novel). I didn\u2019t avoid my family, but I did dream of escaping to a hideaway to finish.<sup><a href=\"#footnote_4\" class=\"footnote-link\">4<\/a><\/sup> I even had to be realistic about my workout progress temporarily so I could write in the mornings instead of using that extra hour for lifting or running (but still workout later in the day). My wife and I always talk about seasons, though, and it\u2019s okay to accept that finishing this huge thing is its own season.<\/li>\n\t<li><strong>Plan to celebrate.<\/strong> I still haven\u2019t figured this one out, completely, but I did promise myself that I would take some time off the novel and rediscover purely relaxing things like working out, reading, or watching some Netflix after I finished this first big step. I even decided that I would get away at some point to decompress, and I gave myself permission to think about that every once in a while when the progress was too slow. In the short term, I enjoyed a dram of Scotch and a nice pipe tobacco the night I finished.<\/li>\n\t<li><strong>Have your next project on deck.<\/strong> At least for me, I need something to jump pretty soon after I\u2019ve finished a big project while my motivation is still high and all my productivity muscles are warm. I don't spend anytime planning it or distracting me while I'm still finishing the original push, and I don't jump right into the midst of another big push. Instead, I just have an idea for that short story or small site I want to attack next, and I let it sit in the back of my mind as I finish the first project. As soon as I finish the push, I move into that other little project and use some of that momentum to throw me a few extra steps ahead.<\/li>\n<\/ol><p>I'm sure there's more I could say, but I fear that writing novels is starting to make me long-winded. If this helps anybody else, that's awesome. For now, I'll just be happy to have this as reference for my future self to remind myself that the push isn\u2019t new as I go through the whole thing again for rewrites and revisions, and I shouldn\u2019t forget to enjoy the moment a little.<\/p>"",
"date_published": "2021-02-09T06:19:00-06:00",
"date_modified": "2021-02-09T07:02:19-06:00",
"author": {
"name": "jeremy"
}
}, {
"id": "2726",
"url": "https://jeremygreenawalt.com/archive/holiday-writing",
"title": "Holiday Writing",
"content_html": "" <figure class=\"inline-image\">\n <picture>\n <img src=\"\/assets\/site\/inline_images\/_inlineImage\/Cousin_time.jpeg\" title=\"Cousin Time\" \/>\n <\/picture>\n <\/figure>\n <p>Over the holidays, I was inspired by Stephen King to try an experiment called \u201cshowing up every single day [to write].\u201d I know, that\u2019s painfully close to what I already try to do and advocate, but what that meant was that I didn\u2019t take a \u201cvacation\u201d from writing on days like Christmas Eve or Christmas just because it was expected. I mean, nobody would have looked down on my work ethic if I hadn\u2019t lugged my mechanical keyboard to Oklahoma to spend an hour or two hidden away during \u201cfamily nap time\u201d to work on a manuscript, but I couldn\u2019t think of a real reason <em>not<\/em> to write.<\/p>\n<p>So, I did bring my mechanical keyboard in it\u2019s own little case, and I did setup to write when the rest of the family was taking a well-deserved break. What I realized, unsurprisingly, was that it felt no different than any other writing day, and that was perfect.<\/p>\n<p>The more important thing I felt because of writing on those \u201coptional\u201d days, though, was the relief that I had built up a margin to cover future problems. When I used to \u201ctake a break\u201d on weekends or holidays, even if I felt all the energy to write, I never had any padding or margin in my schedule. So, then the random Monday or Tuesday where I couldn\u2019t write for real reasons, or I just didn\u2019t generate anything worth keeping, felt like they derailed everything. By ignoring the date on the calendar, I was able to write when I actually had more time and energy than usual, and I\u2019m not as worried if something happens later that requires my energy.<\/p>\n<p>So, I wrote every day, including all the standard holidays, and I still spent plenty of time chasing around my son and his cousins or hanging out with the adults after bedtime. I generated almost 10k words over the break, and I\u2019ve continued to let that margin build into the new year.<\/p>"",
"date_published": "2021-01-18T21:14:00-06:00",
"date_modified": "2021-01-18T21:24:46-06:00",
"author": {
"name": "jeremy"
}
}, {
"id": "2696",
"url": "https://jeremygreenawalt.com/archive/my-winter-2020-writing-schedule",
"title": "My Winter 2020 Writing Schedule",
"content_html": "" <figure class=\"inline-image\">\n <picture>\n <img src=\"\/assets\/site\/inline_images\/_inlineImage\/cappuccino_sf.jpeg\" title=\"Cappuccino SF\" \/>\n <\/picture>\n <\/figure>\n <p>For those interested, this post is a \u201cbehind-the-scenes\u201d look at one of things I'm doing to crank out about 6k-7k words\/week toward my novel (and none of this counts).<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m trying out a new schedule, again, in my pursuit of maximizing time for writing, family, and work. My wife knows (unfortunately) that I\u2019m not afraid to experiment with my schedule, or even my sleep. I\u2019ve been a late night person, an early morning person (seeing 3am as both a night person and morning person), a power napping person (still a good idea, when possible), and even a multiphasic sleeping person (sleeping only 2 hours every day, broken up into 20 minute power naps). Thankfully, I\u2019m not pursuing anything so extreme, this time. I\u2019ve simply switched from writing at night, after bedtime, to writing in the morning, when the rest of the house is still asleep.<\/p>\n<p>When I first got serious about carving out writing time, I adjusted my schedule so I could stay up later. I still woke up early enough to workout before my son was awake, but I did almost all of my writing after the rest of the house went to bed. I actually really liked writing in the evening. When I could do it, I had hours and hours stretched in front of me, and I could relax on the back porch (sometimes with an adult beverage) and write until I was ready to fall over.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, when work got busier or the kid was a little more exhausting than usual, I had nothing left when it was supposed to be time to write. Sometimes, I would just write pages of nothing useful. Most of the time, I gave up and watched something before bedtime.<\/p>\n<p>Best case, I managed to get my energy up and get in the zone, and then I didn't have much time left for reading before I passed out. Unfortunately, for the stuff I'm working on right now, I need more time for reading and researching than the moments before I fall unconscious. <\/p>\n<p>So, my new schedule means I get up about 90 minutes earlier so I have time to write before working out. Writing this way, I've been able to be very consistent (which is better than getting in the zone twice a week), and I have my evenings free to read for at least an hour or two after bedtime for the rest of the house. I love the consistency, and I'm burning through books, so that's awesome. I also found out, after almost a year of working after hours, that I can look forward to being \u201cdone\u201d with the day as soon as I get to dinner time. It's all relaxing and reading after that.<\/p>\n<p>The major downside for right now is the \u201chard out\u201d in the morning when I have to stop writing to work out, get ready for work, and wake up the toddler. Even if I feel inspired, I have to stop, but I'm still more consistent. Of course, part of this current transition is preparation for Christmas break when I <em>can<\/em> keep on writing while my family leaves the house or does their own thing, so that will be awesome.<\/p>\n<p>After winter? Once it's perfect weather outside in the evenings and my wife is completely fed up with me going to bed relatively early? I'm sure that I'll try to figure out a way to get back to writing in the evenings again, but now I'll look at ways that I can do it without giving up my reading time, becoming inconsistent, or losing the great feeling of accomplishment at the end of the day. If I actually figure all that out, I'll probably talk about it here!<\/p>"",
"date_published": "2020-12-08T17:19:00-06:00",
"date_modified": "2020-12-08T17:42:25-06:00",
"author": {
"name": "jeremy"
}
}, {
"id": "2644",
"url": "https://jeremygreenawalt.com/archive/reeses-pieces",
"title": "Reese’s Pieces",
"content_html": "" <figure class=\"inline-image\">\n <picture>\n <img src=\"\/assets\/site\/inline_images\/_inlineImage\/Oom_Paul_pipe.jpeg\" title=\"Oom Paul Pipe\" \/>\n <\/picture>\n <\/figure>\n <p>One day, not that long ago, my friend John jumped onto Slack to announce \u201cI found Reese\u2019s Pieces.\u201d I joked that it sounded like a tragedy until I saw the title case, but \u201cI found Reese\u2019s pieces\u201d would be a great opening line for Neil Gaiman. He countered that is sounded more noir, and I accepted the challenge (that he didn\u2019t actually make) to write a hard-boiled detective story about Reese\u2019s pieces. <\/p> <hr class=\"graphic-separator default\" \/> <p>I found Reese\u2019s pieces. I shouldn\u2019t have been down that way anyhow, but I was, and I found him, and now I was involved.<\/p>\n<p>Johnny Reese was new blood with old money, and he had been throwing it all over town. I didn\u2019t know the kid all that well, but we knew some of the same people. Specifically, we both knew Charlie Dunbar, who had asked me to meet him down at the pier that night. He said he had a friend who was scared, and he needed me to try to calm him down and maybe set some things right.<\/p>\n<p>I never saw Charlie that night, but I did see Johnny Reese for about two seconds before his car exploded and pieces of dear Reese and his beautiful imported convertible were spread all over the wharf. I hadn\u2019t been on the force since the mayor personally had me blacklisted, and I didn\u2019t think this would be the best way to run into my old chums, so I took off.<\/p>\n<p>I didn\u2019t know much about about Johnny, besides what every one knew about his old money and taste in young blondes, but I knew my buddy Charlie. With roughly the shape and size of a gorilla, and none of the agility, he couldn\u2019t have fit in that little import and he couldn\u2019t have been there and run away without me seeing.<\/p>\n<p>So, he wasn\u2019t there, which meant I needed to head to Leo\u2019s to see if he had been in that night. Dollars to donuts, the big ape had forgotten about the meeting completely or was too drunk to get off the stool.<\/p>\n<p>Leo\u2019s was just a block away from the wharf and looked like the kinda place that might have been nice if it hadn\u2019t been a block away from the wharf, and if it wasn\u2019t filled with the kinda folks who drink at the wharf. Leo had dressed up the outside with a nice sign and a new paint job on the bricks, but the inside was dark and the smoke got into your pores the moment you hit the door. A long row of stools lined the bar, but Charlie wasn\u2019t on any of them.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou seen Charlie?\u201d I asked as soon as Leo looked my way. My voice should have been shaking or something after what I just saw, but I didn\u2019t know Johnny, like I said. He was just another mook in a fancy car that shouldn\u2019t have been down this way either.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNot in three nights. I figured he shacked up with another widow, and we wouldn\u2019t see him until he got kicked out. You know something?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo. He called me about a gig, but it doesn\u2019t matter much now. I think that one dried up before I got there.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI seen him,\u201d said a voice dripping with so much Southern sweetness that I almost couldn\u2019t stand it.<\/p>\n<p>What little light Leo\u2019s provided seemed to find her alone at the bar, blonde hair fell over her face and onto her shoulder, where it met up with a red dress that couldn\u2019t have looked more out of place here if it was on fire. She moved the blonde strands away, and I saw the face of an angel looking back at me.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOkay, Doll, since you seem to be in our conversation, can you help me out? I think I better find him tonight, the way things are going.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, he just happened to tell me to be looking out for a guy that looked like a copper on a bad beat with a three-day beard, so you\u2019re in luck. He\u2019s uptown. You got a ride?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This night was either getting better or worse, and I couldn\u2019t figure out which. I could stick around here, but the cops would be making there way up here soon enough to either fill up the drunk tank or look into the explosion at the pier. I might as well choose the broad, and maybe I\u2019d find Charlie after all.<\/p>\n<p>Even though I\u2019m sure Leo wasn\u2019t planning on charging her a dime, I settled her tab on my account and we walked over to my old beater, which I had parked a few blocks further away in case things went sour at the docks. I still didn\u2019t see the cops running to the pier, which didn\u2019t make much sense, but I breathed easier.<\/p>\n<p>The dame \u2014 I didn\u2019t even ask her name \u2014 gave me directions as we raced my old Ford through the dark streets until we started to reach the well-lit side of town. Manicured lawns and lawn jockeys replaced the dirty sidewalks and overturned trash cans as we wound our way into the fancy neighborhoods. The deeper we drove into the luxurious area, the more the dame seemed to fit in and the more my car seemed not to. I was almost relieved when she directed me into the the big circular driveway; at least I wouldn\u2019t get pulled over by an overeager patrol car once I got this thing off the road.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCharlie\u2019s not your friend, Sam.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow\u2019d you know my name?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCharlie told me all about you and how he\u2019s the one that got you drummed off the force. Said you wouldn\u2019t cover something up, and he went to the mayor about it. Said you never knew a thing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAlright. I\u2019m not sure why I would believe you, but what else did he say?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe said he was gonna kill my brother, Johnny, and frame you up for it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s a lot of talkin\u2019 for the big ape. Why do you suppose he would say all that to a dame like you?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>We were walking towards the big house as she kept chatting me up about Charlie. I couldn\u2019t figure our her game until she turned around, and I saw the gun in her hand. Little Saturday night special. Not that accurate, but it wouldn\u2019t be hard to hit a big guy like me from a few steps away.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe was talking because he thought I would run away with him, and we would split my brother\u2019s share of the inheritance, I s\u2019pose. The thing he couldn\u2019t get was that I really did love my brother, even if he was frittering away my money, too. Although, I guess he figured that out when I shot him at the docks tonight. I was too late to save Johnny, though, and now they\u2019re going to be looking for whoever set that bomb.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThen they can find Charlie, I'm sure.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat would be true, but I tried to weigh him down before I threw him in. And if they did find him, then I\u2019d be under suspicion, and that doesn\u2019t seem fair.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo, who\u2019re they gonna find, you suppose?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ll bet that they\u2019ll find the ex-cop who was stalking me and even came up to the house I shared with my brother, don\u2019t you?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNow, Doll\u2014\u201c<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy name is Lenora.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She fired the gun at my gut, and I watched it jump in her hand. She fired two more times just to make sure the job was done, and hurried in to call the police about the man who she thought was trying to break into the house. She was going to let them know that she was scared for her life and might have to defend herself.<\/p>"",
"date_published": "2020-11-16T22:03:00-06:00",
"date_modified": "2021-10-28T06:30:31-05:00",
"author": {
"name": "jeremy"
}
}, {
"id": "2595",
"url": "https://jeremygreenawalt.com/archive/new-book-sneak-peek",
"title": "New Book Sneak Peek",
"content_html": "" <p>Okay, so this is different, but I thought it would be fun to put out a sneak peek of one of the chapters I was just working on for my book. This chapter basically stands alone as Darius is telling the narrator, Will, what he knows about demons. <\/p> <hr class=\"graphic-separator default\" \/> <p>\u201cI don\u2019t know, Darius. What do you know about demons?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, I know what they taught in seminary, but I can\u2019t say that\u2019s anything I really thought about at the time. If you want to know what I really know, I can only tell you what my grandma back in Louisiana used to tell me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe told you about demons, huh?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn a way, yes. See, I don\u2019t know if you knew this, but my grandma on my mom\u2019s side was from Ethiopia. She didn\u2019t move over here until she was in her thirties, then she met my grandpa, and they had my mom, so she was close to seventy before I was born. Still, she lived another twenty years, and I was her favorite audience as a little boy. I called her \u2018Abai,\u2019 which she taught me meant Grandma, and I used to sit on her knee every night as she would tell me stories that she had heard growing up. Thankfully, she translated them into English from her own Amharic, but sometimes she\u2019d mix in the original names to keep it poetic.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHer favorite stories where Bible stories or stories about the history of Ethiopia. She told me about how Matthew, the disciple, spread the Gospel to the Ethiopians after Pentecost, and how Ethiopia was one of the oldest Christian nations in the world, going back to the 4th century. She told me about the rich history of their churches and the stories that were passed down from that time to now.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen I was a little older, she told me about the Book of Jubilees, which was an ancient Jewish text, part of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and part of the Ethiopian Orthodox Bible that she grew up with. It was all about the earliest days of mankind and the angels, and it had its own origin story for what we call demons.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOkay, I\u2019m intrigued,\u201d I offered as I got comfortable in my chair. I was prepared for a nice story time from Darius\u2019s Abai.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, according the Book of Jubilees, God sent 200 Watchers down to the earth in the time before the flood. They were some of God\u2019s best angels, and they were supposed to watch mankind to make sure that Man followed God\u2019s laws. They were entrusted with delivering justice in God\u2019s name. After watching us for a while, though, they started to desire the mortal women, for they thought they were God\u2019s most beautiful creations. Eventually, their leader, Samyaza, convinced all the Watchers to rebel with him, so he wouldn\u2019t be punished alone for wanting the human women. They stole away some of the human women to marry them, and they taught Man about astrology, necromancy, and how to fashion weapons for murder.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey bore half-angel offspring, called the Nephilim, who were giants and mighty warriors, but they were also cruel and tortured mankind. The Nephilim had their own children, the Elioud, who were even more cruel. Each of the Nephilim and Elioud wanted to rule our earth as kings, so they battled each other for 500 years, killing one another and the men, women, and children that got in their way or worshipped the wrong Nephilim and Elioud.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGod was horrified by what they had done to his creation, and he sent a flood to kill them along with the rest of mankind, except for Noah and his family. When the Nephilim and Elioud were killed by the flood, their spirits were torn from their bodies and lived on. Since they were still half-spiritual beings, unlike man, they could fully experience death while still living, but only as disembodied spirits in pain and anguish.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAfter the flood, God was going to cast all of their spirits into Tartarus, a place of eternal darkness, as punishment for corrupting men. Before he damned them, though, one of the Archangels who was responsible for testing mankind, Mastema, asked God to leave him one-tenth of the spirits to use to test men before God\u2019s final judgment, when Mastema and the spirits would be cast into eternal darkness with all the sinners that they trapped. In the Book of Jubilees, God granted the request, and they were dispersed across the land to test man. This army of the sons of Nephilim and Elioud under Mastema could no longer have physical bodies and they were restricted in many ways, but they could tempt man to do evil before God, and they could even inhabit willing bodies or use their powers to kill when God allowed it. God allowed Mastema to test Abraham, and it was his idea that he should sacrifice his son until God delivered them both from Mastema\u2019s plan. It\u2019s even said that Mastema aided the Egyptian magicians against Moses, but was then unleashed as the last plague against the to murder all the firstborn of Egypt with his own hand.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat remnant of roaming spirits, spared going to eternal darkness for now just so they could test more men and possess the sinful, following orders from Mastema, the bringer of damnation, those are the demons I fear when I\u2019m alone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd you were how old when your grandma bounced you on her knee and told you about the evil giants and baby-slaying demons?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYeah, Abai was from a different time, with different rules for bedtime stories,\u201d Darius had to laugh a little, at the absurdity of telling a child about the origin of demons, and to cut the tension we both felt even talking about it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo, for the record, you\u2019re going with the disembodied spirits of the ancestors of the corrupted Watchers, cursed to walk among us without physical bodies after experiencing death, and tasked to test us before God? I don\u2019t know if I\u2019ll sleep tonight, but I also don\u2019t have a better answer to the question of demons.\u201d<\/p>"",
"date_published": "2020-11-09T21:28:00-06:00",
"date_modified": "2020-11-10T07:16:30-06:00",
"author": {
"name": "jeremy"
}
}, {
"id": "2446",
"url": "https://jeremygreenawalt.com/archive/my-new-quitting-record",
"title": "NaNoWriMo and How I Quit Before it Began",
"content_html": "" <figure class=\"inline-image\">\n <picture>\n <img src=\"\/assets\/site\/inline_images\/_inlineImage\/Jeremy_Pipe.jpg\" title=\"Jeremy and a Pipe\" \/>\n <\/picture>\n <\/figure>\n <p>This year, I signed up for \u2014 and then quit \u2014 NaNoWriMo in all of twenty-four hours. To be fair, I like the concept of NaNoWriMo<sup><a href=\"#footnote_1\" class=\"footnote-link\">1<\/a><\/sup>, and I've tried it (unsuccessfully) in the past to attempt an ill-conceived memoir. I've heard it's worked for some people, and that's awesome and why I signed up initially. It\u2019s also a great motivator to start writing and stop procrastinating, but that\u2019s actually not my problem right now.<\/p>\n<p>In the short time I was signed up, though, I just kept getting a nagging feeling that it wasn\u2019t for me this year. Then, out of the blue, my wife sent me part of a great <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/_fbCcWyYthQ\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Joe Rogan interview with Firas Zahabi<\/a> where they talk about overtraining to the point of burnout, and I realized that\u2019s what I was basically looking at if I tried to write 50,000 words this month for no reason than to complete a challenge. More importantly, I was already on my way to my goals of writing my book through consistently writing every day\/night for a long time (the BJJ goals talked about in the video), and this one-month push wasn\u2019t going to help me at all.<\/p>\n<p>I also realized that, unrelated to burnout or distraction, I\u2019m having a real struggle already to shift my mindset away from writing being a hobby to something I do as part of my life (again). I\u2019ve written exactly one (non-fiction) book before (so this may not be typical), but I know for a fact that that the only way I finished that thing by the end of the year was treating it like a job. I\u2019ve had after-hours jobs many times in the past, and I\u2019m convincing myself that this is no different. So, I can\u2019t think of writing because it\u2019s November or because my virtual competition team is counting on me, but I have to write because it\u2019s what I do now, and I always show up.<\/p>\n<p>So, like that, I did what I try (and fail) to do in poker; I folded my hand and quit before I had too much committed to the pot. Technically, I quit on October 30th, so I hadn\u2019t even started, yet. This was the earliest I\u2019ve quit something, and I feel pretty good about it. Now, I\u2019m going to get back to writing and stop talking about it.<\/p>"",
"date_published": "2020-11-02T20:03:00-06:00",
"date_modified": "2020-11-02T20:22:39-06:00",
"author": {
"name": "jeremy"
}
}, {
"id": "2381",
"url": "https://jeremygreenawalt.com/archive/a-short-dissertation-on-mechanical-keyboards",
"title": "A Short Dissertation on Mechanical Keyboards",
"content_html": "" <p>Seeing as I've been busy working on my first novel, I thought I'd take a break from trying to be creative or inspirational to sing the praises of my favorite keyboards. If you think that a keyboard is just a keyboard, then that\u2019s fine. I honestly feel that way about some things, and I can understand. If you are at least open to the idea that typing can be more productive or even enjoyable, type a lot, and agree you should at least put consideration into any tool that you use for 8+ hours a day, then I totally recommend checking out the options out there and at least think about being intentional about the keyboard you\u2019re using (even if you do end up liking the Apple keyboard).<\/p>\n<p>I will get a few things out of the way, though.<\/p>\n<p>First, I am unabashedly a fan of mechanical keyboards. If you're afraid they're too loud, you should check out the \u201csilent\u201d switches that are at least less loud. They may not be as fun as the click-y ones, but they\u2019re still better than the Apple keyboard or stock PC keyboard. For what it\u2019s worth, my current Keychron with brown switches gets no complaints, even when I\u2019m on a conference call and have to leave the mic open while I type and talk.<\/p>\n<p>Second, I don't buy a lot of keyboards to try them out. I have tried out a few keyboards over the years, but I am in no way interested in reviewing keyboards or starting an expensive hobby to find the perfect keyboard; I'm a writer. With that in mind, I\u2019ve normally done a lot of research and bought the safest bet. The exception is probably the Qwerkywriter S that I\u2019ll talk about first, but that was a gift and is not bound by the laws of normal purchases.<br \/><\/p>\n <hr class=\"graphic-separator default\" \/> <figure class=\"inline-image\">\n <a data-fancybox=\"gallery\" href=\"\/assets\/site\/inline_images\/_full\/qwerkywriter.jpeg\"> <picture>\n <img src=\"\/assets\/site\/inline_images\/_inlineImage\/qwerkywriter.jpeg\" title=\"Qwerkywriter S\" \/>\n <\/picture>\n <\/a> <\/figure>\n <h2>Qwerkywriter S<\/h2>\n<p>First, I\u2019ll start with the most polarizing keyboard. It is hands-down my favorite keyboard that I\u2019ve ever owned, and I love typing on it. It looks like a mechanical typewriter (in fact, the creator started out prototyping it using his own Remington Rand), and it feels about as much like a typewriter as you can get without using an actual typewriter. Under the hood, it\u2019s got Bluetooth with easy switching between up to three devices, n-key rollover when plugged in (basically, you can hit all the keys simultaneously, and it registers them all), and German engineered blue Cherry MX switches (it\u2019s \u201cclicky\u201d).<\/p>\n<p>Those are the things that it make it a good keyboard, but it\u2019s the feeling of it that makes it my favorite keyboard. I will openly admit that all my computers and servers are named after typewriters (Remington and Royal are my laptops, Hermes and Underwood are my servers), and I actually do fondly remember writing my first stories as a kid on either my dad\u2019s fully mechanical Royal or my mom\u2019s \u201cportable\u201d typewriter with memory and a small display (you could write a full page on the couch). Not everybody has that same history, so it may not immediately connect with them, but it gives me all the feelings.<\/p>\n<p>I appreciate that they made a few touches like making the \u201cpaper tray\u201d into an iPad stand, making a functional carriage return bar, and using the traditional paper scroll wheels to control page scroll on one side and volume on the other.<\/p>\n<p>Next, I love the feel of typing on it. No, it doesn\u2019t feel exactly like typing on a typewriter, but nothing does. It does, however, feel tactile and satisfying, and I prefer the click-y blue switches when I\u2019m writing long form essays or fiction. I know, it\u2019s a very particular thing, but I can definitely type faster for long pieces if I have very tactile switches (right now I\u2019m typing on my second favorite keyboard, the Keychron, and the brown switches are slowing me down).<\/p>\n<p>Second to last note is that this is the most complimented keyboard I\u2019ve ever owned. Most of my keyboards have never really gotten a compliment (unless you count people knowing I\u2019m in my office because they were loud), but guests at our house literally stop and stare at this beautiful piece of steel on my desk. I can\u2019t blame them, either, because I still stare at it sometimes.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, this was a gift from my wife, and honestly a pretty expensive one considering how much she does not care about keyboards. She decided it was worth the expense because she thought it would inspire me, and now I\u2019m writing a novel; so I guess she was onto something. She bought me sweat-proof Bluetooth earbuds years ago to inspire me to run, and I ran a half-marathon in them. She\u2019s obviously very good.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3oxwK43\" title=\"Amazon Affiliate Link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Amazon (affiliate link)<\/a><\/p> <hr class=\"graphic-separator default\" \/> <figure class=\"inline-image\">\n <a data-fancybox=\"gallery\" href=\"\/assets\/site\/inline_images\/_full\/keychron.jpeg\"> <picture>\n <img src=\"\/assets\/site\/inline_images\/_inlineImage\/keychron.jpeg\" title=\"Keychron K1\" \/>\n <\/picture>\n <\/a> <\/figure>\n <h2>Keychron K1 (Version 4)<\/h2>\n<p>Okay, after that rambling essay on my favorite keyboard for writing fiction and this blog, I\u2019ll talk a little bit about my favorite everyday keyboard, the Keychron K1. This is a keyboard that I appreciate for its specs more than any emotional connection, but I really do appreciate the specs.<\/p>\n<p>I have brown switches, which are considered less tactile than the blue switches, but they also hit with a thud (instead of a clack) and are generally quieter. On top of that, the open construction doesn\u2019t echo or reverberate my keystrokes, so it\u2019s actually surprisingly quiet (in my opinion) for a mechanical keyboard without expressly \u201csilent\u201d switches (I\u2019ve even typed while on a conference call without deafening anybody). Again, this is a personal idiosyncrasy, but I like to program or edit code with brown switches. It slows down my typing in the good way, and it just feels right somehow.<\/p>\n<p>Next, I like that it (again) is Bluetooth with up to three devices or wired with USB-C. While my Qwerkywriter is almost always in Bluetooth mode because I\u2019m using my iPad Pro, this keyboard stays plugged into my monitor in my home office all day. I do appreciate the fact that, if I want, I can grab it and take it in the other room with me, though, or connect it to my iPad with a switch. I also just really appreciate one more thing that\u2019s USB-C, because I\u2019m slowly trying to weed out all my less standard micro and mini USB plugs.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, I kind of like that I have a dozen or so options for the backlighting effect. Although I touch-type almost all the time, I will admit that I miss the backlighting when I use my Qwerkywriter (not that typewriters ever had backlit keys). On this keyboard, not only do I have backlit keys, but the motion lighting is actually pretty entrancing in different modes and can be a nice treat during a long day.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/35G2MSQ\" title=\"Amazon Affiliate Link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Amazon (affiliate link)<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.keychron.com\/products\/keychron-k1-wireless-mechanical-keyboard\" title=\"Keychron.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Keychron site (helpful if you want to customize, or they have a sale)<\/a><\/p> <hr class=\"graphic-separator default\" \/> <h2>WASD Keyboards Code<\/h2>\n<p>Finally, we have the mechanical keyboard that started it all for me and currently resides at my work office, which I rarely use these days. It\u2019s my basic, black keyboard, and it was my first expensive keyboard (after I actually bought and returned a few others). Like my home office Keychron, this has brown switches, but it\u2019s not open and the keystrokes are kind of loud. I did add rubber o-ring switch dampeners to give it a more solid thunk and be a little less clack-y in my shared office (<a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/37FAPNL\" title=\"Amazon link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Amazon<\/a>), and that helped. I also appreciate that it came with DIP switches that you could use to turn off Caps Lock and switch to a Mac keyboard layout.<\/p>\n<p>I might be coming off as lackluster, but that\u2019s just because it\u2019s literally my third favorite keyboard right now. It was a wonderful upgrade from the Apple keyboards, and it felt much more like the original 90s Apple keyboards that I remember. For a basic, no-frills keyboard that still outpaces a lot of the competition, I\u2019m happy that I have this keyboard at my office to use when I go in, and I plan on giving some custom key caps when I'm back in the office more. <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/2JdhWaV\" title=\"Amazon Affiliate Link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Amazon (affiliate link)<\/a><\/p>"",
"date_published": "2020-10-26T23:20:00-05:00",
"date_modified": "2021-09-28T21:25:41-05:00",
"author": {
"name": "jeremy"
}
}, {
"id": "2224",
"url": "https://jeremygreenawalt.com/archive/why-im-trying-to-write-fiction",
"title": "Why I’m Trying to Write Fiction",
"content_html": "" <p>So, I\u2019m trying to write fiction again after\u2026 many years, and it feels scary, new, and interesting all at once. Even though I\u2019ve been writing continuously since I can remember, that\u2019s meant articles\/essays, a book on web development, and a lot of website copy for most of my adulthood. I\u2019ve been drawn back to fiction, though, because I\u2019ve been feeling like I want to talk about things that are bigger than what I can easily talk about in an article or another book on programming. I was inspired by Neil Gaiman\u2019s MasterClass to try it out again because he talked about the big truths you can make easier to demonstrate in fiction than you can in an essay. I can read great essays about bravery, sacrifice, and doing hard things, but it will never have the same impact that <em>The Lord of the Rings<\/em> had on me when I read it for the first time. Gene Roddenberry famously used <em>Star Trek<\/em> to address the most complex philosophical thoughts, and he made it consumable by teenagers. Some truths are easier to see in a made-up world, and I think that I want to talk about some of those truths in the future.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, my current goals are nothing like <em>Lord of the Rings<\/em> or <em>Star Trek<\/em>, right now, but I\u2019m trying. I\u2019m writing, and I\u2019m editing, and I\u2019m letting my friends tear it down, so I can make it better. I\u2019m doing that because I think that I could one day address truths better than I ever will in an article like this. Of course, I\u2019m also committed to still writing articles like this to talk about my journey, so there you go.<\/p>"",
"date_published": "2020-10-19T18:58:00-05:00",
"date_modified": "2020-10-20T18:05:30-05:00",
"author": {
"name": "jeremy"
}
}, {
"id": "2191",
"url": "https://jeremygreenawalt.com/archive/arbitrary-deadlines-and-turning-40",
"title": "Arbitrary Deadlines and Turning 40",
"content_html": "" <blockquote>\n<p>\u201cYou really become a chef between 40 and 50 years old. Before that it\u2019s school and research and doubt.\u201d<\/p>\n\n<p>\u2014 Alain Paissard in Chef's Table France<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>I thought about this quote a lot as I started to enter my forties and\n rethink some of my preconceptions and notions about my own career and \nwhat a successful life even looks like. For so much of my life, I\u2019ve \nbeen obsessed with early success and setting up random deadlines for \nmyself.<\/p> <figure class=\"inline-image\">\n <picture>\n <img src=\"\/assets\/site\/inline_images\/_inlineImage\/good_sht.jpeg\" title=\"Good Sh*t\" \/>\n <\/picture>\n <\/figure>\n <p>I remember how scared I felt to be responsible for hiring the people I would mentor at just 26 and 27, but I also remember feeling like I was falling behind when I didn\u2019t go full-time with my own studio until I was 32, while still being full of doubts that I was ready. A few years after that, I remember feeling like a failure when I thought my studio wasn\u2019t growing fast enough by the time I was 38 (it was still just me plus an apprentice and contractors), and I decided to change paths again. Everything was based on arbitrary mile markers that I had created in my own head, and I was always behind.<\/p>\n\n<p>What if some of us don\u2019t reach the peak of our abilities that early, though? What if some careers or lives require the kind of experience and learning that we can only get from time and failure? I\u2019m still figuring this out, but I\u2019m slowly accepting that timing doesn\u2019t matter as much as I thought it did. Some authors may become bestsellers in their twenties, but Mario Puzo didn\u2019t publish <em>The Godfather<\/em> until he was almost fifty (and kept publishing sequels until his death thirty years later). Stan Lee didn\u2019t break out with <em>Fantastic Four<\/em> until he was forty, and Alan Rickman was 41 when he finally got his big break in <em>Die Hard<\/em>. Not only did it not matter if they succeeded before they were 25, all of them had a few extra decades of adult life to hone their craft and gain the kinds of experiences they could later draw on to be successful.<\/p>\n<p>So, like I said, I\u2019m still processing this, but maybe some of us just have to spend those extra years in learning, research, and doubt before we\u2019re \u201cready\u201d to be a chef or a novelist or a comic book writer. Since I don\u2019t really have a choice at this point, I\u2019ll just have to embrace that and make sure I put all those earlier years to good use now.<\/p>"",
"date_published": "2020-10-12T21:51:00-05:00",
"date_modified": "2020-10-13T08:15:05-05:00",
"author": {
"name": "jeremy"
}
}, {
"id": "2066",
"url": "https://jeremygreenawalt.com/archive/the-importance-of-staying-uncomfortable",
"title": "The Importance of Staying Uncomfortable",
"content_html": "" <blockquote><p>\u201cWrestling is not for everyone, but it should be.\u201d<\/p>\n\n<p>\u2014 Dan Gable<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>I wrestled in high school and a little in college. I was never that good, but I did learn (perhaps, because I was never that good) to embrace discomfort. Once I let go of my inherent need to be comfortable, more opportunities opened up. I could endure being smashed by a better opponent while I waited for my chance to strike. I could push myself a little harder to get just a little bit stronger every day, and I stopped complaining about minor things. The gift of no longer searching for relief in every moment was an amazing gift, and one of the reasons that I truly hope my son will wrestle one day.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, I forgot some of those lessons in my late twenties. I got flabby and out-of-shape physically, and I got really comfortable in every other way with soft couches, TV binges, and just the right amount of productivity. I don\u2019t want to sound overly dramatic here. I was still a good husband, a decent leader, and I even managed to publish a book that took way too many hours to write. It just wasn\u2019t until my mid-thirties, while running my own company, that I realized how much I reeked of comfort, and how much it was affecting my mind and output as much as my soft middle.<\/p>\n<p>I thought about how much better I would be doing if I lived a little more like my younger self who used to unabashedly \u201cembrace the suck,\u201d and I decided to make a change. I started running. Running sucks. Runners know it, even if they only admit it to other runners. It wasn\u2019t comfortable, but I thought it could be worse, so I signed up for the Hottest Half \u2014 a half-marathon, in Texas, in August. That was really uncomfortable, so then I started barbell training. I thought it would be really painful to throw a few hundred pounds on my back and squat as much as possible, and I was right. Eventually, I discovered Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ), which can cause a lot of discomfort; not as much as wrestling, but still pretty far from a comfy couch.<\/p>\n<p>After a couple years, I was able to look back and realize that I had gained more than some new torn ligaments and cauliflower ear; I had gained a powerful new advantage in life. I woke up earlier without complaining. I stayed up later when I needed to write articles like this one. I made the time to do things that I know will really matter instead of staying in my little spot on the couch. I helped friends move instead of watching Netflix. Why? I was no longer attached to my old protectiveness over myself and my comfort. Plus, nothing really seems that bad if you\u2019ve already gone through some really heinous experience in the gym or on the BJJ mat that same week.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t want to sound more hardcore than I am. I\u2019m not an ex-SEAL, I don\u2019t shed actual blood in my garage gym every morning before breakfast, and I\u2019m not even winning the fight against the \u201cdad bod\u201d most days. I think that\u2019s the great thing about learning to embrace discomfort in daily life (and getting stronger and harder working as a result), though. My bar for discomfort might be a lot lower than my 20 year old self\u2019s level, but it doesn\u2019t matter. As long as I really stretch myself and embrace the suck a little, I\u2019m still going to get the benefits.<\/p>\n<p>So, I guess that\u2019s the lesson that I\u2019m learning (and maybe sharing, if you\u2019re interested). It\u2019s important to embrace a new level of discomfort, even if \u2014 specially if \u2014 you\u2019re not a super-motivated god among men, ready to deadlift small cars every morning at zero dark thirty. I started out failing to finish a couch to 5K program until I pushed myself to run a 15K (and then a half marathon). So, maybe the first step is just going a few steps past what\u2019s comfortable, then a few more steps to real discomfort, then keep doing it until your new goals are beyond what you would have imagined.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cGo without a coat when it\u2019s cold; find out what cold is. Go hungry; keep your existence lean. Wear away the fat, get down to the lean tissue and see what it\u2019s all about. The only time you define your character is when you go without. In times of hardship, you find out what you\u2019re made of and what you\u2019re capable of. If you\u2019re never tested, you\u2019ll never define your character.\u201d<\/p>\n\n<p>\u2014 Henry Rollins<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>"",
"date_published": "2020-10-05T21:15:00-05:00",
"date_modified": "2020-10-27T09:31:05-05:00",
"author": {
"name": "jeremy"
}
}, {
"id": "2039",
"url": "https://jeremygreenawalt.com/archive/article-1",
"title": "Article #1",
"content_html": "" <blockquote><p>\u201cAnyone who isn't embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn't learning enough.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Alain de Bolton, British philosopher<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This first article, coming back after a couple years and a full redesign, feels so momentous. This relaunch started over five years ago on a version of my site that was (at the time) five years old, and I was changing it from the site of a young creative director who just wanted a blog to the site of a mid-thirties studio owner who really needed to talk about business and leadership and possibly even attract new clients or speaking opportunities. Recently, of course, that redesign has been picked up by a forty year old who has gone back, kicking and screaming, to full-time development, and he doesn\u2019t really have any great interest in attracting clients, speaking, or sounding like an expert. He just wants to talk about his struggles and victories, and share his heart with anyone who needs it because he really, really likes writing and teaching. Oh yeah, and he's writing more fiction.<\/p>\n<p>So, now, a personal site started by a developer in his mid-twenties became a professional blog by a young creative director (still in his twenties), and then became a marketing tool for a small studio owner, and is now being replaced by a personal site with a very simple premise: I have done a bunch of stuff, good and bad, and, as I go forward, I want to share my journey with others while trying to get better all the time. That\u2019s really it. Also, the site is finally responsive and not built on a CMS that I stopped personally trying to use over a decade ago.<\/p>\n<p>With all that behind me, welcome to the new site. If you want to know how I explain myself these days, I have an <a href=\"\/about\">about me<\/a> page, and if you want to get updated, you can use RSS or the newsletter subscription below (I promise, I only send out updates when I actually write something my wife says is worth reading).<\/p>"",
"date_published": "2020-10-01T16:31:00-05:00",
"date_modified": "2020-10-02T05:51:26-05:00",
"author": {
"name": "jeremy"
}
}, {
"id": "348",
"url": "https://jeremygreenawalt.com/archive/michael-caine-was-in-the-worst-jaws",
"title": "Michael Caine was in the Worst Jaws",
"content_html": "" <blockquote><p>\u201cI have never seen the film, but by all accounts it is \nterrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is \nterrific.\u201d Michael Caine, in an interview talking about <em>Jaws: the Revenge<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>I watched <em>Jaws: The Revenge<\/em> recently because, well, I had just re-watched <em>Jaws<\/em> (amazing) with my wife (more amazing) and I tend to be a completionist. After <em>Jaws<\/em>, I watched <em>Jaws 2<\/em> (Jaws returns and only the sheriff remembers what happened last time) and <em>Jaws 3<\/em> (Jaws in SeaWorld), and finally made my way to <em>Jaws: The Revenge<\/em>\n (Jaws in the Bahamas). I was watching this already terrible movie make \nweird excuses for Roy Scheider\u2019s lack of appearance (he died offscreen \nwhile not signing a contract to be in the worst Jaws), and I heard the \nunmistakable voice of Michael Caine. Sir Michael Caine. Sir Michael \nCaine was in the fourth Jaws film because Roy Scheider was not.<\/p>\n<p>I was awestruck. I jumped to the internets to explain this to me. I \nknew that Michael Caine was already a well-established actor before J:tR\n came out. In fact, he was basically at the peak of his career (I \nchecked). As far as he'll say, he was not blackmailed and did not owe \nmillions in back taxes. He just did a job the best he could, and he got \npaid. Then, in a move that I didn\u2019t think was possible, he went on and \ncontinued to be a great actor, grew even cooler, and became Sir Michael \nCaine.<\/p>\n<p>I don't know why it was so shocking to me, but it was. I guess I was \nshocked because everytime I do a slightly less than groundbreaking \nproject I feel like I'm just sliding backwards faster than I can run and\n that, because of that project, I'll be doomed to finish my career \npenniless in obscurity. It may be extreme, but I don\u2019t think I\u2019m alone \nin these feelings. No matter how many fun redesigns\/relaunches I \ncomplete, working on this one Wordpress extension sets me all the way \nback to junior developer. Obviously, that was not true for Michael \nCaine, and it doesn't seem to be that way for anyone else either.<\/p>\n<p>People work. Sometimes they do good work on bad projects. We forget, and keep working on new projects. Sir Michael Caine was in <em>Jaws: The Revenge<\/em>. Dustin Hoffman was in <em>Ishtar<\/em>. Patrick Swayze in <em>Skatetown, U.S.A.<\/em>\n I don\u2019t know why I give them more slack than myself, but I'm going to \nchange the math in my head (or try to). Maybe I can do a non-portfolio \nproject without feeling like I\u2019m moving backward. Maybe I can earn a \npaycheck using my less glamorous skills occasionally without fearing \nthat I\u2019m redefining my career. Michael Caine didn\u2019t become cheesy action\n movie guy after that one film. Most importantly, I have to refuse to \ndefine myself or my career off any individual projects (big or small).<\/p>"",
"date_published": "2017-03-20T21:16:00-05:00",
"date_modified": "2020-09-27T16:52:15-05:00",
"author": {
"name": "jeremy"
}
}, {
"id": "354",
"url": "https://jeremygreenawalt.com/archive/another-lesson-learned-while-running-in-public",
"title": "Another Lesson Learned While Running in Public",
"content_html": "" <p><em>Disclaimer: I\u2019m training for a major half marathon that has taken up most of my time and all of my other sources for analogies.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I have a favorite running path that I go to for all my long runs. \nThere\u2019s a 3.75 running path between two parks (a 7.5 mile circuit), and \nyou can of course extend it on either end or run it a couple times to \nget some great mileage without getting hit by cars or running out of \npavement. That's not why I run there, though. There is a more magic \nresult of this \u201cextend-your-own-course\u201d path, though: you never know \nwhere anybody is at in their run.<\/p>\n<p>You don\u2019t know if that person who flew by you early on is a seasoned \nrunner on their eighth mile of the morning or just an overzealous newbie\n on their first quarter mile. You don\u2019t know if that slightly rounded, \nwheezing man (me) is really out of shape or just on his thirteenth mile.\n You don\u2019t know (until you\u2019ve been running their a while) whether \nsomebody is at the park every weekend or once a year. We\u2019re all just \nrunners, and it\u2019s completely impossible to judge yourself against \nanybody else.<\/p>\n<p>Even more interestingly, I don't know what part of the longer journey\n they might be on. I see some of the same people in passing, but I don't\n know their story; were they a college athlete, or did they just lose \ntons of weight (or both)? Did they just start training for an \nultra-marathon or are they about to run their first 5K? I have no way of\n knowing, so I can\u2019t measure myself against their pace either to beat \nmyself up or make myself feel better than them. All I can do is feel a \ncertain kinship with them as fellow runners and wish them the best as I \ntry not to fall off the path or dry heave in their presence.<\/p>\n<p>As with most painfully transparent analogies, this has something to \ndo with life in general. When you happen to glance at somebody\u2019s \nportfolio or see their new job on LinkedIn (ugh), you don\u2019t have enough \ninformation to do anything but wave as you pass each other. You don\u2019t \nknow where they are at, and you don\u2019t know where they are trying to go. \nNot only is it misguided and a bad idea to measure yourself against \nthem, it\u2019s technically impossible to even get a good reading. All you \ncan do is appreciate their progress as a fellow \u201crunner\u201d in this life, \nwish them the best, pay attention to your own feet, and try not to throw\n up on the sidewalk.<\/p>\n<p>I would promise this was my last easy running analogy for a tough \nlife lesson, but I will remind you again that I am, evidently, \nofficially becoming a runner and we are bound to talk about PRs, shoes, \nenergy gels, or \u201clife lessons from miles on the road\u201d at least once per \nday.<\/p>"",
"date_published": "2016-06-09T21:21:00-05:00",
"date_modified": "2020-09-27T13:33:15-05:00",
"author": {
"name": "jeremy"
}
}, {
"id": "371",
"url": "https://jeremygreenawalt.com/archive/launch-when-its-better",
"title": "Launch When It’s Better",
"content_html": "" <p>I'm in the middle of working on a redesign of this site and relaunching my business, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.craftandstory.com\" title=\"CraftAndStory.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Craft+Story<\/a>,\n so I pulled out one of my old rough drafts that I never finished. This \nis especially fitting right now, because it's about launching your \nredesign with a small (or no) team:<\/p>\n<p>In agile development teams and online businesses, a lot of us talk \nabout launching early and iterating in the web world these days. That \nmakes sense for those of us who are launching web apps and online \nservices with a development mindset and some experience launching on the\n web. What about non-technical ministries and small businesses that are \nworking on launching major updates or redesign? How do you, as a \nnon-development leader, know when you should go ahead and launch \nsomething that may not feel \"there,\" yet? Simple. You launch when it\u2019s \nbetter than what you have.<\/p>\n<p>Is the new thing perfect? No. It won\u2019t be. Should you launch when \nit\u2019s 90% there? Should you even waste time trying to calculate how \n\u201ccomplete\u201d it is? Probably not. We (leaders of development) might have a\n lot of cool Gantt charts and complicated ideas to tell us exactly how \nfar along a project is supposed to be, what percentage is complete, and \nwhat the estimated completion date is (based on more guessing than we \nwill admit), but that's probably not your real job. Frankly, that\u2019s a \nridiculous onus to put on the non-developers out there, so just follow \nthe simple rule: Launch when the new thing is better than what is \ncurrently up there.<\/p>\n<p>I have the fancy charts and timelines at my disposal, and I still use\n that as my real test, for better or worse. When I\u2019m doing updates on my\n sites, I launch as soon as it\u2019s better. Is the new banner perfect? No, \nbut the fact is it\u2019s better than the old one (which might be outdated \nfor any number of reasons). As soon as it\u2019s better, I launch. Period.<\/p>\n<p>I say this especially applies to leaders in small businesses and \nministries with little to no internal teams because it really does. I \nknow how busy you can be wearing five different hats on any given day, \nand percentage complete doesn't mean anything in the real world to your \nusers. If you wait for everything to be perfect, you will run out of \ntime or money eventually. Once you have something better, just launch. \nIf there's more work to be done, keep somebody like me around on \nretainer for a while to keep making improvements. I'll even update the \nGantt charts.<\/p>"",
"date_published": "2016-03-21T21:33:00-05:00",
"date_modified": "2020-09-27T13:54:31-05:00",
"author": {
"name": "jeremy"
}
}, {
"id": "381",
"url": "https://jeremygreenawalt.com/archive/what-i-learned-about-hustle-while-training-for-a-15k",
"title": "What I Learned About Hustle While Training For a 15k",
"content_html": "" <p>I\u2019d like to think I learned a lot about hustling from <a href=\"https:\/\/itun.es\/us\/IU1Fw?i=377445372\" title=\"iTunes\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Roots<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/acuff.me\" title=\"acuff.me\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Jon Acuff<\/a> (in different ways). I've been reading Jon Acuff\u2019s blogs since Stuff Christians Like, and I recommend <em>Quitter<\/em>\n as my favorite (non-idealistic) guide for moving on to your next big \nthing (which may not be quitting your day job). I also want to stay on \nhis good side in case I need an endorsement for a future book. That \nbeing said, I hadn't really internalized the hustle until I signed up \nfor my first 15k.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s a quick summary of me before signing up for my first 15k which I finished last weekend (at the beginning of February):<\/p>\n<ul><li>I had just started working out again in July after 15 years of steadily putting on weight.<\/li>\n\t<li>I mostly lifted weights and did \u201cfun\u201d cross-training like jogging with a ruck and boxing on a heavy bag.<\/li>\n\t<li>I was not a runner, and I did not enjoy running.<\/li>\n\t<li>I normally maxed out at 5 miles without stopping.<\/li>\n\t<li>I averaged a 12:00 min\/mi pace (not great).<\/li>\n\t<li>I was obviously overly optimistic if I thought I could run more than 6 miles, much less the 9.3 miles required.<\/li>\n<\/ul><p>Despite all of this, I saw people signing up for the Hot Chocolate \n5k\/15k and thought (1) I should challenge myself and (2) I could already\n run 5k, so it was not challenging enough. So, I signed up in November, \nkept working out like normal, and, in January, started a real training \nprogram. I cut out non-essential cross-training and ran four days a \nweek. I never skipped a run. I woke up even earlier. I monitored my diet\n before every long run to learn what worked and what didn't. I ran \nextra-long on Saturdays. Basically, I had to hustle every day to meet my\n goal.<\/p>\n<p>I realized by the end of January that I had been working hard before,\n but I had not been hustling with a goal to hit. Hustling meant setting a\n goal where I would be judged on how much I had worked up to that point.\n It meant temporarily giving up the fun, productive things like boxing \nand cross-training so that I could carve out more time to train for my \nreal goal. It meant going to bed early, so I could wake up even earlier \nwith energy to run. It meant running when everyone else was asleep or \nrelaxing with friends and family. It meant never skipping a scheduled \nrun (even when that meant running trails at a bed and breakfast during \nvacation). It meant measuring my results week-by-week by keeping track \nof my times, and it meant pushing myself extra hard to run 10 miles on \nSaturday mornings. It meant I finally internalized the hustle.<\/p>\n<p>What I learned applies to any area where I have to hustle to be \nsuccessful (running a race, starting a business, growing a business, \netc), and these are my takeaways (in no particular order):<\/p>\n<ul><li><strong>I need to hustle towards a goal.<\/strong> I don\u2019t believe in\n exercising for the sake of exercising. That doesn't motivate me to try \nharder. I believe in training. Training has a final goal, and it\u2019s \nsomething that I can get closer to through my own efforts. My goal was \nto finish a 15k in under 1:45:00 (I finished in 1:30:12). In business, \nmy goal has been to bring in more qualified clients and grow so that I \ncan help more people grow (which I'm doing, but I still have some <a href=\"http:\/\/www.craftandstory.com\/#contact_form\" title=\"craftandstory.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">open slots available for new clients<\/a>).<\/li>\n\t<li><strong>I need to track my progress.<\/strong> I'm hustling towards a\n goal, but that goal might be a ways out and I can\u2019t just blindly train \nor work hard without knowing if I'm doing the right things to make \nprogress. I tracked my average pace on every run, and I quickly adjusted\n variables (normally my diet or water intake) when I saw the numbers go \nin the wrong direction. If my goal is to land fifteen new clients by the\n end of the year, I need to be aware enough to change things up if I \nonly have two new clients in July.<\/li>\n\t<li><strong>I need to have a clear idea of what I can control and what I can\u2019t.<\/strong>\n I learned about Stoicism while studying at the Air Force Academy, and \nthis always stuck with me. I can\u2019t control how well other people run or \nthe fact that many of them have not gotten out of shape since college, \nbut I can be responsible for how often I run and what I eat. I still \ncan\u2019t change other people\u2019s budgets or priorities, but I can control how\n well I present myself and appeal to their needs. I can\u2019t hustle my way \naround all the factors that affect the outcome, but I can take complete \nownership of everything within my control.<\/li>\n\t<li><strong>I may have to sacrifice (some normally good) things to hustle.<\/strong>\n I had to give up sleeping in and eating fatty foods, but I also had to \ngive up training that didn\u2019t help my running and seeing a lot of friends\n that were on \u201cnormal\u201d schedules.<\/li>\n\t<li><strong>The focused hustle is not a permanent state of being.<\/strong>\n I hope I always work hard. I think I always have. This sort of \nhustling, though, needs to be a very focused period with a beginning and\n an end (when I reach my goal). I'm giving up some good things to get a \nlittle further. I'm also burning away with less recovery. All of that is\n okay, though, because I know that I'll reach my goal. Then, I can \nrecover and start thinking about the next goal (like a GORUCK Challenge,\n which means changing my routine and hustling again).<\/li>\n\t<li><strong>I need to be judged at the end.<\/strong> Just like I know I\n need a goal, I know I need some skin in the game and I need to be ready\n to be judged based on how well I hustled up to that point. I might be \njudged pass\/fail like completing a GORUCK challenge or making enough \nmoney to go independent with a side-project, or I might be judged by how\n fast I was or how many new clients I brought in. Whatever it is, I have\n to have the opportunity to fail at the end, or I won\u2019t work my tail off\n to do better.<\/li>\n<\/ul><p>So, that\u2019s it. I ran my first road race in over 15 years. More \nimportantly, I learned how to internalize the hustle for my personal and\n professional pursuits and tried to share what I learned here. As \nalways, hit me up on <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/jgreenawalt\" title=\"@jgreenawalt\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Twitter<\/a> or in <a href=\"mailto:jeremy@jeremygreenawalt.com\">email<\/a>\n if you have any questions or feedback. If you want to work with me to \ngrow your own business or ministry (and watch me hustle), fill out my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.craftandstory.com\/#contact_form\" title=\"craftandstory.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">handy contact form<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Final cautionary note:<\/strong> After basic online research, I\n am now aware that almost everyone recommends spending more than four \nweeks preparing for your first 15k (possibly more like 16 weeks). \nObviously, that is helpful information that I did not have in January of\n this year when I started training, but I thought I should pass it on in\n case you get inspired and don\u2019t want to injure yourself.<\/p>"",
"date_published": "2016-02-16T21:37:00-06:00",
"date_modified": "2020-09-27T13:47:38-05:00",
"author": {
"name": "jeremy"
}
}, {
"id": "499",
"url": "https://jeremygreenawalt.com/archive/trellololo",
"title": "Trellololo",
"content_html": "" <figure class=\"inline-image\">\n <picture>\n <img src=\"\/assets\/site\/inline_images\/_inlineImage\/trello.jpg\" title=\"Trello\" \/>\n <\/picture>\n <\/figure>\n <p>I\u2019ve gotten a lot of questions about \u201cmy system\u201d since my wife Instagrammed a shot of my <a href=\"http:\/\/trello.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Trello<\/a> board a few weeks ago. First, I\u2019ll admit a few things:<\/p>\n<ul><li>This Trello board is just one small piece, and it\u2019s all about \nproject management. I still capture and manage my individual tasks in \nOmniFocus, which so many smarter people have already adopted and written\n about.<\/li>\n<li>I don\u2019t separate personal and work tasks. For me, they\u2019re all \nimportant and, being a one-man company, they all have to be done by me.<\/li>\n<li>\u201cMy system\u201d is a hodgepodge of ideas I gleaned from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.accidentalcreative.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Accidental Creative<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/davidseah.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">David Seah<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/gettingresults.com\/wiki\/Main_Page\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Agile Results<\/a>,\n and my own head. I only call it \u201cmine\u201d in the sense that I applied my \nown needs to some very effective systems. I probably broke stuff along \nthe way.<\/li>\n<li>My project management, like my design process, is constantly evolving. My board next year might look very different.<\/li>\n<\/ul><p>So, as I mentioned, I use Trello. I used to use Basecamp for this \nsame system, but I have to admit, I like moving cards around on a \n(virtual) board. A board of columns, unlike a vertical page of lists, \nlets you quickly estimate the relative length of lists. I can see which \nlists are taller, and they should get shorter as I move from left to \nright (roughly). Trello is also free \u2013 so, yay!<\/p>\n<p>How do I actually use Trello, and why do I swear by my (current) \nsystem? Basically, I\u2019ve built a huge funnel out of my board that goes \nfrom big, year-sized projects down to small, day-sized bites. In a very \nparticular order, these are my columns:<\/p>\n<h2>This Year<\/h2>\n<p>Three main projects\/goals for this year. Importantly, these have to \nbe things that I can do and aren\u2019t related to outside factors (like \nearning a lot of money), and they need to be audacious enough that \nthey\u2019ll probably take more than one quarter to complete. Examples are \nwriting a book, publishing a side project, etc. Obviously, this breaks \nthe \u201clength of column\u201d part of my funnel, because there are only three \ncards. I\u2019ve decided to let that go.<\/p>\n<h2>This Quarter<\/h2>\n<p>This is where I put all of my projects for the quarter. Once a \nquarter, I spend about half a day planning and filling this list with \none card per project, and they need to be accomplishable within the \nquarter. I might break down smaller chunks from my year goals like \ncreating an outline for the book I want to write this year. I also pull \nfrom my ever-growing \u201cbacklog\u201d of projects\/ideas in Evernote and other \ncapture systems. Anytime I think of something amazing (or just \nnecessary) that I can\u2019t jump on right now, I always add it to a backlog \nor, occasionally, directly to this list with the knowledge I\u2019ll be \nlooking at it again in the future.<\/p>\n<h2>This Month<\/h2>\n<p>Once a month, I choose projects for my month by looking at my \nprojects for the quarter. If a quarterly project can be done in a month,\n I\u2019ll just pull the card over. If I have a big project for the quarter, I\n might make a new card for a month-size piece I can complete. In the \nfirst month of the quarter, I try to make the new list about a third the\n size of the quarter list. The next month, it should be about half the \nsize. The last month, I try to move everything over or have an honest \nreflection on why the project isn\u2019t happening. This is not only logical,\n it keeps me honest about my progress and doesn\u2019t allow projects to \n\u201cslip away\u201d without a conscious decision. <\/p>\n<h2>This Week<\/h2>\n<p>This is the list of projects for the week. On Friday, I like to \nreview and clean this list out. On Sunday, I fill the list back up again\n by pulling projects over from the monthly list. Like before, I either \npull over a whole project or create a new card for a week-sized bite of \nbigger projects. Like a funnel, this should be a smaller subset of the \nmonthly projects every week until I can clean out the whole list of \nmonth-long projects.<\/p>\n<h2>Today<\/h2>\n<p>These are the three things that I want to accomplish today. At the \nend of each day, I review this list (which is normally emptied) and pull\n over three projects or create new day-sized cards for the next day. I \nlike to get a jump in the morning right after email hits me, so I always\n do this the night before. Since I use OmniFocus for my tasks, I\u2019ll \nnormally go back and flag the day\u2019s projects in OmniFocus in the \nmorning. For the rest of the day, I can live in the \u201cFlagged & Due\u201d \nperspective until I\u2019ve checked everything off. Very importantly, this \nhas to be a list of things I can successfully finish even if some bad \nthings happen or I have a (minor) client emergency.<\/p>\n<h2>Done<\/h2>\n<p>Every finished card goes into this list. At the end of every day I \n(hopefully) move the day\u2019s tasks over, and every Friday I move over any \nlarger tasks from This Week that have been completed. At the beginning \nof each quarter, I archive the old \u201cdone\u201d list and start a new one with \nthe year and quarter in the title - e.g. \u201cDone (2013 Q1)\u201d.<\/p>\n<h2>My separate list of quarterly goals<\/h2>\n<p>I took the idea for a written list of goals from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.entreleadership.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Entreleadership<\/a>,\n though I\u2019m sure many have talked about it. At the beginning of each \nquarter, I write a goal for each major area of my life: career, \nfinancial, spiritual, physical, intellectual, family, social. Again, I \ntry to make these things that are concrete and I can accomplish (workout\n 4 times\/week) instead of fuzzy or goals that rely on other factors \n(lose weight). I review these each Friday to see how I\u2019m doing and if I \nneed to change anything to accomplish my goals.<\/p>\n<p>Well, that\u2019s my system (in less than a thousand words), and I \nwholeheartedly do not recommend copying it verbatim. Instead, I\u2019d \nrecommend setting up your own Trello board, Field Notes, whiteboard, \netc. possibly using this as a template. Then, mess it up. Change it. \nMake it adapt to your life and schedule, and <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/jgreenawalt\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Tweet me<\/a> or <a href=\"mailto:jeremy@pocketrevolutionary.com\">email me<\/a> to tell me all about it.<\/p>"",
"date_published": "2013-01-24T22:15:00-06:00",
"date_modified": "2020-09-28T15:56:41-05:00",
"author": {
"name": "jeremy"
}
}, {
"id": "510",
"url": "https://jeremygreenawalt.com/archive/fear-failure-in-dallas",
"title": "Fear & Failure in Dallas",
"content_html": "" <p>A writer I follow, Yuvi Zalkow, is promoting <a href=\"http:\/\/brilliantnovel.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">his book<\/a> this week, and he issued a <a href=\"http:\/\/yuvizalkow.com\/general\/fear-failure-experiment\/\" title=\"The (Semi-) Great Fear & Failure Experiment of 2012\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">challenge of sorts<\/a>\n for other writers and creators to share their stories of fear and \nfailure as he girds himself for the reviews and sales figures. Normally,\n I don't actually follow writing challenges, but I figured that the \nconcepts of fear and failure are already talked about on this site \nenough that you wouldn't mind or even notice.<\/p> <figure class=\"inline-image\">\n <picture>\n <img src=\"\/assets\/site\/inline_images\/_inlineImage\/pencil-notebook.jpg\" title=\"Pencil notebook\" \/>\n <\/picture>\n <\/figure>\n <p>I thought about some of my failures. My first website that I built \nfor a paycheck was a total failure. It never launched, so I can't point \nto an archive, but I will tell you that it involved the background image\n of a beach and small stones that were used for navigation with rollover\n effects in all their mid-2001 DHTML glory. It was horrible, and I \nhonestly thought it was \u201cgroundbreaking\u201d. When I fully realized how \nunusable and uninspired it was, I questioned if I had any right to build\n websites at all.<\/p>\n<p>If I'm being completely honest, the first year or so of Vintage 56 \nwas a year of bigger failures. The company survived, so the year itself \nwasn't a total failure, but I know that my part in it involved lots of \nmedium-sized failures. I wasn't a good businessman, I got distracted by \nthe (very minor) glory of being a creative director, and I almost \npermanently burned a lot of relationships along the way. I think we've \nall made up now, but that doesn't mean I didn't fail.<\/p>\n<p>As bad as that failure was, though, talking about it didn't make a \nvery interesting article, so I started thinking about my fears. I'm \nafraid that I won't deliver what I promised on every single project I \ntake. I'm afraid that I'll fail as a business owner when I can't make a \nprofit, I can\u2019t make payroll, or I even have to lay people off (I don't \nactually have employees, yet). I'm afraid that I'll turn out to be a bad\n husband or father because I didn't always have the best example. Like \neverybody else with any ambition, I'm just afraid of failing. <\/p>\n<p>Looking at that list, though, my most obvious fears are pretty boring\n and only worth talking about over a bottle of Scotch to my closest \nfriends. I wanted to write something deeply honest, so I kept \nbrainstorming until I realized one of my fears that I almost assume will\n happen: I'm afraid that I will never enjoy success. I'm not just afraid\n that I'll never be successful (though that's there), but I'm afraid \nthat even if I have success I'll never see it because I'll be too locked\n into my ongoing roller coaster of feelings about what I make:<\/p> <figure>\n <picture class=\"lazyload\">\n <source srcset=\"\/assets\/site\/hero_images\/_2400xAUTO_crop_center-center_none\/fear-and-failure.png\" media=\"(min-width: 800px)\">\n <source srcset=\"\/assets\/site\/hero_images\/_1600xAUTO_crop_center-center_none\/fear-and-failure.png\" media=\"(min-width: 600px)\">\n <source srcset=\"\/assets\/site\/hero_images\/_1200xAUTO_crop_center-center_none\/fear-and-failure.png\" media=\"(min-width: 480px)\">\n <source srcset=\"\/assets\/site\/hero_images\/_960xAUTO_crop_center-center_none\/fear-and-failure.png\" media=\"(min-width: 320px)\">\n <source srcset=\"\/assets\/site\/hero_images\/_640xAUTO_crop_center-center_none\/fear-and-failure.png\" media=\"(min-width: 5px)\">\n <img src=\"\/assets\/site\/hero_images\/_preload\/fear-and-failure.png\" \/>\n <\/picture>\n <\/figure>\n <ul><li>Every new idea I have starts with fear. I'm still thinking of the \nlast thing I shipped, which has now become a model of execution and \ndelivery in my head. If it was good, then it was my peak, and nothing I \nproduce from now on will ever be any good by comparison. If nobody liked\n it, then I'm only proving the point that the best is far behind me. In \neither case I'm afraid that the next thing will fail.<\/li>\n<li>As I dive in, I start liking it more. The more I whittle it down and\n tweak it, the more I can see it is actually better than what I've done \nbefore. I start to love it, and I keep working on it until I decide it's\n officially done. If it's an article, I do a last edit and post it. If \nit's a chapter, I proofread it and send it to the editor. If it's a \ndesign, I'll finalize everything and send it to my team. Whatever it is,\n I have to commit while I love it and before I start second-guessing all\n of my decisions.<\/li>\n<li>Immediately after launching or posting, I start critiquing \neverything and finding things I could have done better. I decide that it\n wasn't that good, and I was foolish to launch. I'm afraid that my \nclient\/editor\/readers won't really like it, and I become convinced that \nanybody who says they like it is just <a href=\"\/archive\/san-francisco-fathers-day-and-slow-clapping\" title=\"Slow Clapping Syndrome\">slow-clapping<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>As time goes on after the launch, I start to separate myself from \nit, and I began liking whatever it was in retrospect. This feeling keeps\n rising until I\u2019ve idealized it in my memory and the shadow of \u201cthe last\n big thing\u201d is guaranteed to overshadow any future projects. I\u2019m \nconfident the next thing I start will fail compared to the monstrous \n(and unexplainable) success that this has become. I would feel \nsuccessful, but by this point I've already thought about the next thing \nand that fear is slipping in again.<\/li>\n\n<\/ul><p>So, my fear is that, like a mouse on a treadmill, I\u2019ll keep repeating\n this process forever without ever enjoying success. That\u2019s just my \nirrational fear, though, and there\u2019s no reason to believe I won't be \nable to one day sit back and enjoy the feeling of publishing a book \nwithout being afraid of the missing follow-up or immediately critiquing \nit to death. <\/p>\n<p>For now, though, I'm just going to hit publish and wait ten minutes \nbefore I start either hating or idealizing this post. Ten whole minutes \nof feeling good starting now.<\/p>"",
"date_published": "2012-08-12T22:19:00-05:00",
"date_modified": "2022-08-11T08:00:14-05:00",
"author": {
"name": "jeremy"
}
}, {
"id": "567",
"url": "https://jeremygreenawalt.com/archive/typo3-quebec-and-july-4th",
"title": "TYPO3, Quebec, and July 4th",
"content_html": "" <p>A couple weeks ago, I got to attend the TYPO3 conference in Quebec, \nand I\u2019ve been so engrossed in PHP and design comps since I got back that\n I\u2019m just now thinking about some of the highlights.<\/p>\n<p>First\n of all, Quebec is an amazing city, and I\u2019m glad Rebekah was there so we\n could spend a whole day exploring the city by ourselves. It is \ndefinitely more French than I was prepared for, but we had plenty of \npeople willing to translate menus and signs for us. Canadians are some \nof the kindest people I\u2019ve met, and we (almost) never got scolded for \nbeing monolingual.<\/p> <p>They let me teach what I\u2019ve learned about process through my jobs as a\n software engineer, developer, designer, systems administrator, project \nmanager, and creative director. I was worried at first about the \npainfully small group in my room, but everybody was actually engaged and\n we had great questions and answers throughout the whole forty-five \nminutes. I was just happy we used the whole time; last year I spoke so \nquickly I finished in thirty minutes and there were no questions. After \nthis year, I won\u2019t feel bad asking to speak again.<\/p>\n<p>Mostly, though, I was just there for the gathering of the tribe. \nWorking with TYPO3 in the US is a little isolated sometimes because our \nnumbers are so small compared to the huge community in Europe. For a few\n days, though, I can remember that there\u2019s this whole group of people \nthat I automatically have a connection with. We all share a passions for\n good design and development, and we\u2019ve all done something to give back \nto the group through extensions, core development, blogging, speaking, \nor writing a book.<\/p>\n<p>So, of course, I came back inspired and got straight to work with no \nreal reflection on the trip. I worked on extension development, a PHP \nproject, and a website design until I finally felt I had atoned for my \ndays off in Canada. Now, on the July 4th, I\u2019m taking a moment to reflect\n and be thankful. I\u2019m thankful for all of the communities that I\u2019ve been\n a part of: my church, the Air Force Academy, TYPO3, Dallas designers \nand developers, and many more \u2014 formal and abstract, large and small. \nI\u2019m taking a moment to be grateful for their support and remember that I\n can still do more to support others in my communities.<\/p>\n<p>It was a small gathering of like-minded individuals that created the \ncountry that gave me so many opportunities, and every day I see proof \nthat small, motivated communities can still create amazing things. Happy\n Independence Day!<\/p>"",
"date_published": "2012-07-04T21:13:00-05:00",
"date_modified": "2020-09-27T16:25:00-05:00",
"author": {
"name": "jeremy"
}
}, {
"id": "584",
"url": "https://jeremygreenawalt.com/archive/start-small",
"title": "Start small.",
"content_html": "" <figure class=\"inline-image\">\n <picture>\n <img src=\"\/assets\/site\/inline_images\/_inlineImage\/invitation_graphic_2.jpg\" title=\"Invitation graphic 2\" \/>\n <\/picture>\n <\/figure>\n <p>Start small. That was the line from the invitations to our Craft + \nStory \u201cthanks for helping me launch\u201d party. It started as a way to make \nlight of how tiny my new company was. We have no big names, no outside \nfunding, no award-winning website, and I\u2019m the only employee. Frankly, I\n was nervous about all of that at the time, and I just wanted to \nacknowledge that, yes, I knew I wasn\u2019t becoming one of the big boys. My \nwife and our friend Erin took those words, though, and turned them into \nsomething else. As they wrote it on coffee cups and treats (for my \nguests) and etched it onto a bottle of Scotch (for me), it became a \nrallying cry. Start small!<br \/><\/p> <figure class=\"inline-image\">\n <picture>\n <img src=\"\/assets\/site\/inline_images\/_inlineImage\/invitation.jpg\" title=\"Invitation\" \/>\n <\/picture>\n <\/figure>\n <p>I realize now that starting small isn\u2019t a weakness. My dad started \nsmall with his one-person company to bring musical education into \ndaycares and schools, and I still hear from students whose lives were \nchanged by him. My mom started a small desktop publishing company that \nhelped her raise me as a single mom and introduced me to the world of \ncomputers. They never had a choice to start bigger, but they worked with\n what they had to build a better life for their only son. <br \/><\/p>\n<p>So, \u201cstarting small\u201d has now become an asset for Craft + Story. I\u2019m \nno longer ashamed of my single-person company or our lack of awards and \n\u201cbrand equity\u201d in the community. We might get bigger. We might become \nbetter known. Even if that never happens, I learned that my job is to do\n the best with what I have right now.<\/p>\n<p>That means I\u2019m going to stop writing so I can go and work on a \nwebsite for my new client. He\u2019s launching a new church this year, and he\n asked for my help. Right now, it\u2019s just him and a handful of advisors. \nIt\u2019s pretty small, and we\u2019re both okay with that.<\/p>"",
"date_published": "2012-05-21T21:18:00-05:00",
"date_modified": "2020-09-27T13:58:56-05:00",
"author": {
"name": "jeremy"
}
}, {
"id": "612",
"url": "https://jeremygreenawalt.com/archive/not-a-manifesto",
"title": "Not a Manifesto",
"content_html": "" <p>So, my big project for the beginning of this year (that\u2019s not really a\n secret) has been the launch of my own little design and development \nstudio, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.craftandstory.com\" title=\"CraftandStory.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Craft+Story<\/a>. I\u2019m not officially launching until May,<sup><a href=\"#footnote_1\" class=\"footnote-link\">1<\/a><\/sup>\n but until then I\u2019m spending a lot of time thinking about what I want it\n to be and, most importantly, who I want to work with \u2014 my clients and \nmy team. Instead of a 3,000 word, Mad Men-esque manifesto, though, I \ndistilled it down to a few core values for the company:<\/p> <hr class=\"graphic-separator default\" \/> <h2>We believe in partnering with clients.<\/h2>\n<p>We respect our clients, and we only work with clients who respect what we do. We are partners until the bitter end. <\/p>\n<h2>We are problem-solvers.<\/h2>\n<p>Our job is not to make something pretty. Our job is not to make a \nwebsite or create an app. Our job is to solve the client\u2019s problem.<\/p>\n<h2>We think deadlines matter.<\/h2>\n<p>We don\u2019t create arbitrary deadlines or agree to impossible timelines.\n We rely on our process and client meetings to set a series of \nmilestones for the project. Then, we hit every one of those deadlines.<\/p>\n<h2>We don\u2019t strive to be efficient.<\/h2>\n<p>We are not a factory, and we don\u2019t churn out websites like one. We \nlike to work with a small number of clients every year, and we spend our\n time in discovery and design finding the best (not the fastest or \neasiest) solution for them.<\/p>\n<h2>We aren\u2019t cheap.<\/h2>\n<p>Every client gets the same treatment: discovery, planning, design, \ndevelopment, and deployment. We need to understand the problem before we\n can create a solution. We can\u2019t take shortcuts to finding the perfect \nsolution.<\/p>\n<h2>We don\u2019t really care about tools.<\/h2>\n<p>We\u2019ve built websites in TYPO3, ExpressionEngine, Wordpress, Magento, \nand custom web apps. We know all about HTML 5 and CSS3. We even build \niPhone apps, and we love it. At the end of the day, though, we are just \nchoosing the best tool for the job at hand, and we don\u2019t get too \nattached to any of them.<\/p>\n<h2>We don\u2019t deliver multiple designs when only one is right.<\/h2>\n<p>Our job is to solve a creative problem in the best way possible, and \nthere is usually only one best solution for any one problem. During the \ndesign process, we explore all of the possible solutions and whittle \nthem down ruthlessly until only the best survive. The solution (or \nsolutions) that make it through are shown to the client. Everything that\n doesn\u2019t solve the problem is thrown out.<\/p>\n<h2>We hate the hourly rate.<\/h2>\n<p>We like to work on whole projects, and we don\u2019t believe that hourly \n(or daily) rates are the best model for us or the client. Our work is \ndone when we\u2019ve delivered the best solution - not when an arbitrary \nnumber of hours has elapsed.<\/p>\n<p>We do offer hourly rates for consulting only, but we\u2019re not cheap.<\/p>"",
"date_published": "2012-02-02T21:27:00-06:00",
"date_modified": "2020-09-27T14:21:20-05:00",
"author": {
"name": "jeremy"
}
}, {
"id": "695",
"url": "https://jeremygreenawalt.com/archive/steve",
"title": "Steve.",
"content_html": "" <p>Around 1986, my family got our first real computer, a Macintosh 512k \n(so titled because of the memory stored behind it\u2019s glowing screen). I \nwas six years old, and it changed my life. My mom had Lupus and couldn\u2019t\n work in a normal office, so when my dad left that year she could only \nwork from home. She had only occasionally used a computer up to that \npoint when her best friend Melinda, who was also in a wheelchair, showed\n her how she was able to work from home using this amazing Macintosh \noperating system.<\/p>\n<p>My mom was hooked. She was able to be one of the early pioneers in \nthe world of desktop publishing when it still seemed like magic. During \nthe hardest years of dealing with sickness, divorce, and single \nparenting, she joined a beautiful new community, the local Mac User \nGroup. She taught me how to write and create on that Mac, and we moved \non to bigger and better Macs like the Mac Classic and even an ill-fated \nPerforma. When she was bedridden at home or in the hospital again later \non in life, she slept with little white earbuds in her ears and a \nPowerbook by her side in case she woke up and needed to connect with a \nfriend on Facebook or play a word game to distract her from pain. We \nboth waited for Apple to release some kind of \u201cmagical tablet\u201d that she \ncould use for reading, writing, and watching movies in bed.<\/p>\n<p>My dad was later to the Mac world. As a musician, he was early to use\n expensive standalone MIDI devices, and he saw the future coming. In \n1994, he decided that he needed a real computer to help him compose \nmusic faster and run a business. His one stipulation that had scared him\n away from most PCs at the time: he didn\u2019t want his computer to make him\n feel stupid, and he didn\u2019t want to devote half his time to learning how\n to use it. I took him shopping at one of the only stores that sold Macs\n (luckily we were in a university town), and he got a Powerbook 500. Ten\n years later, he was still bragging that I was the best son ever; \npartially because I introduced him to the Mac. He also went through \nmultiple machines as he taught music to thousands of children and \nreleased multiple albums, and we talked about how much he loved his \nrefurbished Powerbook and new Mac Mini in our last conversation. He had \nfinally gotten an iPod, and he asked me how to hook it up to his car.<\/p>\n<p>The growth of Apple was a shared experience for all of us. My parents\n were inspired to write, draw, and create music on devices that didn\u2019t \nquite seem like computers to them. I was inspired to write, draw, and \ncreate music by watching them. All of us got excited when Steve Jobs \ncame back to Apple, and all of us prayed for him when he started getting\n sicker.<\/p>\n<p>My father died at the end of 2008, and my mom passed in 2009. Now, \nwith the passing of Steve Jobs, I feel like an era has ended. I\u2019m \nsaddened, because the world is a little bit less interesting than it was\n before. I\u2019m thankful, though, because all three of these people left \nbehind a legacy and the tools to continue what they started. Thank you, \nMom. Thank you, Dad. Thank you, Steve.<\/p>"",
"date_published": "2011-10-06T21:44:00-05:00",
"date_modified": "2020-09-27T14:04:03-05:00",
"author": {
"name": "jeremy"
}
}, {
"id": "282",
"url": "https://jeremygreenawalt.com/archive/my-writing-process",
"title": "My Writing Process",
"content_html": "" <div class=\"plyr__video-embed player\">\n <iframe src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/26239168\" allowfullscreen allowtransparency allow=\"autoplay\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div> <p>I documented my writing and creative process for \u201ccross-training\u201d at \nwork. The tools I use in the video to write and design are Scrivener, \nByword, and Photoshop.<\/p>\n<p>Like when I write, Radiohead (Like Spinning Plates) plays in the background. I recorded and edited everything using ScreenFlow.<\/p>"",
"date_published": "2011-07-10T20:21:00-05:00",
"date_modified": "2020-09-27T14:11:01-05:00",
"author": {
"name": "jeremy"
}
}, {
"id": "728",
"url": "https://jeremygreenawalt.com/archive/san-francisco-fathers-day-and-slow-clapping",
"title": "San Francisco, Father’s Day, and slow clapping",
"content_html": "" <p>My first official conference talk in San Francisco went well.<sup><a href=\"#footnote_1\" class=\"footnote-link\">1<\/a><\/sup>\n All of my words came out, I didn\u2019t die, and I had a lot of really \ninteresting conversations with smart people about mobile development and\n user experiences. On top of that, I got to meet actual people who have \nread my book, which is always a thrill. Most importantly, I did my best \nto accept encouragement or compliments at face value. This is very hard \nfor me because of a disorder that I have named SCS.<\/p>\n<p>SCS, as you may or may not know, stands for \u201cSlow Clap Syndrome\u201d, and\n it is surprisingly rarely diagnosed in the medical community. SCS is \nvery simple, though. Whenever I get a compliment or encouragement, I \nautomatically imagine a slow clap accompanying it in the background. \nObviously this is just in my head, but it effectively negates the \ncompliment unless I can think ahead to shut it off. It can be a \nsarcastic and condescending slow clap:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\u201cI really (slow clap) loved (slow clap) your last blog (slow clap) article. It was sooo (slow clap) original.\u201d<\/blockquote>\n<p>Or it can be the genuine, heartfelt slow clap you reserve for the art\n of five-year-olds you\u2019re not directly related to and adults who have no\n idea they\u2019re operating way out of their realm:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\u201cDid you draw that pipe in Illustrator (slow clap) by \nyourself (slow clap)? It\u2019s very good (for a five-year-old or an adult \nwith a tragic but preventable head injury).\u201d<\/blockquote>\n<p>What does this have to do with Father\u2019s Day? My parents obviously didn\u2019t \ngive me a sarcastic slow clap, and they never patronized me. My father, \npossibly the most gifted musician that I have ever known, always \nencouraged me in piano, cello, bass, guitar, and anything else that I \ntried. He told me when I did well in a piano concert, and he informed \nme, bluntly, when I needed to practice more. Because I grew up with \ntheir honesty, my parents\u2019 words always bypassed the \u201cslow clap filter\u201d.\n Slow claps were never added in post-production, and I took their words \nat face value.<\/p>\n<p>As a natural entertainer, my dad could always captivate a crowd. My \ndad died at the end of 2008, but I know he was proud of me. I know he \nwould have loved seeing me give my first public talk in San Francisco, \nand he would have been following the whole thing on Facebook (once I \npersuaded him not to fly out). Most importantly, though, I know he would\n have been honest with me, and I could have heard everything he said \nwithout slow clap accompaniment. That\u2019s what made him such a great dad, \nand that\u2019s why, no matter what happened between us over the years, I can\n spend my Father\u2019s Day remembering every nice thing he ever said and \nimagining how much fun we would have had hanging out on the back porch \nwith some beers, good music, and stories of San Francisco.<\/p>"",
"date_published": "2011-06-19T21:55:00-05:00",
"date_modified": "2020-09-27T14:11:33-05:00",
"author": {
"name": "jeremy"
}
}, {
"id": "750",
"url": "https://jeremygreenawalt.com/archive/one-hundred-slides-in-ten-minutes",
"title": "One-hundred slides in ten minutes",
"content_html": "" <figure class=\"inline-image\">\n <picture>\n <img src=\"\/assets\/site\/inline_images\/_inlineImage\/keynote_slide.png\" title=\"Keynote slide\" \/>\n <\/picture>\n <\/figure>\n <p>\u201cDon\u2019t be offended if people get up and walk out early.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Awkward pause.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI mean, I\u2019m sure that many people will stay. It\u2019s just\u2026 people are very busy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>My beautiful wife, Rebekah, has been doing her best to encourage me \nbefore my talk at the TYPO3 conference in San Francisco. I need the \nencouragement. I need to hear that I will do fine. I guess I also need \nto hear that I shouldn\u2019t be frustrated if half the room walks out \nhalfway through.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m in the final stages of preparing for my very first conference \ntalk. I made an extensive outline, designed a comprehensive Keynote \ndeck, and I\u2019m covering a topic that I already wrote about in my book \u2014 \nbuilding mobile websites with TYPO3. Now I just need to perfect the \nKeynote and practice, practice, practice.<\/p>\n<p>In theory, I should do okay. Only two big things are making me \nnervous at this point: my talk is 45 minutes and I\u2019m pretty sure \neveryone in the room will be smarter than me.<\/p>\n<p>I can\u2019t help being nervous about the amount of time I\u2019m given; I\u2019m \njust really afraid that I\u2019m going to freak out and speed through a \nhundred slides in ten minutes. I\u2019m not sure if that\u2019s even possible, but\n it still seems completely likely in the paranoid part of my brain.<\/p>\n<p>As far as everyone in the room being smarter than me, my only hope is\n that I can shed light on one new idea for each person to make it worth \ntheir time; I don\u2019t have to revolutionize site-building, just make it \nslightly easier. Really, though, I\u2019m coming to grips with the fact that I\n always just feel like I\u2019ve faked my way into this whole position and \nI\u2019m just waiting to be found out. Maybe I\u2019ll be found out this time. \nMaybe I\u2019ll actually have a few good ideas and I\u2019ll go to bed one more \nnight without everyone knowing that I don\u2019t know what I\u2019m doing. I guess\n we\u2019ll find out this Saturday.<\/p>"",
"date_published": "2011-06-08T22:01:00-05:00",
"date_modified": "2020-09-27T14:12:14-05:00",
"author": {
"name": "jeremy"
}
}, {
"id": "765",
"url": "https://jeremygreenawalt.com/archive/one-serene-moment-of-freedom",
"title": "One serene moment of freedom",
"content_html": "" <p>Confession: I waste a ridiculous amount of time worrying about things\n I can\u2019t fix and feeling defensive about facts I don\u2019t control. I didn\u2019t\n get a degree when I was still in my twenties. I\u2019ve felt under-qualified\n for every job I\u2019ve ever had (even stacking boxes in a factory).<sup><a href=\"#footnote_1\" class=\"footnote-link\">1<\/a><\/sup>\n There are countless creative people with more natural talent than me, \nand I see their work every day. I could go on listing inadequacies for a\n good afternoon, and I wouldn\u2019t get any closer to changing them. Most \nimportantly, I\u2019d never give myself the opportunity to actual produce \nsomething of real value.<\/p> <figure class=\"inline-image\">\n <picture>\n <img src=\"\/assets\/site\/inline_images\/_inlineImage\/glasses_notebook.jpg\" title=\"Glasses notebook\" \/>\n <\/picture>\n <\/figure>\n <p>I\u2019m realizing (slowly) that titles, education, and my personal \nhistory don\u2019t have to affect today as much as I think. I may not be as \ntalented as Jeffrey Zeldman or Jason Santa Maria, but that\u2019s not \ncompletely within my control. I may never be the greatest creative \ndirector in the world, and at times I don\u2019t even feel like a \nparticularly good one. The moment I sit down at work, though, it\u2019s too \nlate to worry about any of that. At that moment, we have passed the \npoint of no return, and no amount of self-deprecation will make me \nbetter equipped right then. The best thing I can do is to sit down, give\n my work complete attention, rely on the experience and education I \nactually do have, and do my best. My best may not be equivalent to \nZeldman\u2019s best, but there\u2019s not much I can really do about that when I \nsit down to work.<\/p>\n<p>At first glance, this may sound like me giving up, but it\u2019s not. I\u2019m \nnot just surrendering to my weak spots. I still work nights and weekends\n to get better at the craft, and I sweat to make sure I never repeat the\n same mistakes twice. When I sit down to design, write, code, or work \nwith my team, though, I am not holding myself responsible for not being \nthe next twenty-something wunderkind or not having thirty years of \nexperience in design. I will do the best with everything I have control \nover, but I have to let the rest go. Then, at least for a few moments \nafter I sit down, I have permission to step out from under the shadow of\n my weaknesses and feel free for a short time. After that serene moment,\n I get back to the hard work of creating, tweaking; and, heaven forbid, \ncritiquing or editing myself.<sup><a href=\"#footnote_2\" class=\"footnote-link\">2<\/a><\/sup><\/p>"",
"date_published": "2011-05-29T22:04:00-05:00",
"date_modified": "2020-09-27T14:12:54-05:00",
"author": {
"name": "jeremy"
}
}, {
"id": "779",
"url": "https://jeremygreenawalt.com/archive/how-to-take-stock",
"title": "How to Take Stock",
"content_html": "" <p>How do you know you\u2019re still working on the important things? Since \nthe beginning of the year I have been on a steady trajectory of \nprojects, conferences, and trips that all fed into the \u201cimportant \nthings\u201d for this season like helping to run a young business and paying \nbills. I didn\u2019t have to worry about major deviations or course \ncorrections. I had an outline from the beginning of the year, and I was \njust filling it in with my own hard work. I probably was too rushed to \nappreciate it at the time, but it was a rare season of \u201cflow\u201d where I \ngot to go down the path set before me.<\/p>\n<p>After my return from Germany, though, I realized that I was finally \nat a point that I needed to start planning and choosing projects again \nfor Vintage 56, the ministry, and myself. We were almost done wrapping \nup some of our biggest projects, and I needed to make some wise \ndecisions about how the next season would play out for my team.<\/p>\n<p>See, one of the best (and most challenging) things about my job is \nhaving two great creative teams (with some of the same people) looking \nat me for direction. Don\u2019t get me wrong; they can be independent and \nself-directed when necessary, but they still look to me to define the \noverall goals and which tasks or projects will help us achieve those \ngoals. Like I said, though, we\u2019ve been filling in an outline from the \nbeginning of the year with only minor projects in-between. It was time \nfor me to do my job as Creative Director and lead not just client \nprojects, but our creative direction for the company as a whole. I set \naside Friday morning to avoid the office, and sit outside with nothing \nbut my sketch pad, pens and pencils, coffee, and a pipe.<\/p>\n<p>The following is a full account of what I did, as a creative and a \nleader, to take stock of all of my projects, create a handful of \nstories, and setup some great projects for my team. This may not work \nfor everyone. It may not even work from me in six months. As a \nframework, though, I think it might be useful to leaders and creatives \nalike:<\/p> <figure class=\"inline-image\">\n <picture>\n <img src=\"\/assets\/site\/inline_images\/_inlineImage\/important_lists_notebook.jpg\" title=\"Important lists notebook\" \/>\n <\/picture>\n <\/figure>\n <ol><li><strong>The first thing I did was ask myself what I thought was important to the ministry, the company and me.<\/strong>\n I wrote down all the major ideas, projects, or tasks that came into my \nhead. I just listed everything we were already actively working on, \nthings I knew immediately that we needed to do from our backlogs, and \nthe things that had been nagging at the edges of my consciousness for \nthe past week. Importantly, this was not a task list (that\u2019s what \nBasecamp and OmniFocus are for) or a someday\/maybe list (all of these \nthings should matter in the next month). It was just an unorganized \nbraindump of what I thought was important.\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>After that initial braindump, I started adding some quick tags for organization.<\/strong>\n I added a column to the left quickly tagging each item as Generals (the\n ministry), Vintage 56 (the company), or personal (including writing, \nspeaking, and work for Rebekah). This took five minutes to decide on the\n three tags and tag each item. The key is to be quick and not create too\n many tags.\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Next, I added another column of tags for what \u201ctype\u201d of thing each line represented.<\/strong>\n Like before, I tried to be quick and just created the tags as I needed \nthem. \u201cDonor development? That\u2019s a pretty big ongoing project. I\u2019ll \nwrite \u2018P\u2019 for project. We need to finish up that client project that\u2019s \n90% done; that\u2019s not really a project anymore, so I\u2019ll put an \u2018F\u2019 for \nFinish Up.\u201d That\u2019s how it went in my head, at least, and it took another\n five minutes.\n<\/li>\n<li>Now that I had tagged everything in one list, I really needed to \nlook at the items for each area (Generals, Vintage 56, and personal) \nindividually. <strong>I just made a list for each area and moved the items to their new lists.<\/strong>\n At the same time, I brought over the \u201ctype\u201d designation of each line \nand differentiated between major projects and minor projects; I did this\n just to make sure I wasn\u2019t setting myself up for failure by giving \nmyself too many major projects in one short period.\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Finally, I started to think more \u201cstrategically\u201d about \neach area by reading through each list and looking for the main theme in\n each list.<\/strong> Any team works better when they can see one or two \noverarching goals for what they are working on each day, even if there \nhappen to be a variety of projects on they way to those goals. If this \nwere a story about Vintage 56 in mid-2011, what would be the plot? What \nwould be the climactic scene? What are the projects, or conflicts, we \nmust overcome to reach our climactic scene? What projects on this list \nwon\u2019t get us any closer to that goal?\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Based on the overall themes and goals, I finally started editing my lists.<\/strong>\n I added a few things from the backlogs that I now realized contributed \nto the goal. More importantly, I removed the items that didn\u2019t affect \nthe goal and put them in the backlog. Every writer will tell you that \nediting is the hardest part, but it\u2019s necessary. Some things might be \ngreat projects for Vintage 56 in a few months, but they would only slow \nus down or distract us today.\n<\/li>\n<li>After all of that, my lists were looking good and I was ready to let my teams see them.<strong> I posted each one in Backpack (one of our greatest assets for the ministry and the firm) in their simplest form.<\/strong>\n For Generals and Vintage 56, I added them to the existing backlog pages\n as a \u201cCurrent Projects\u201d list with the themes as a mission statement at \nthe beginning so that everybody could be motivated towards the same main\n goals. For my own list, I added it to my personal Backpack page with a \nmission statement as well.\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Finally, all of these lists had different actions associated with them once I posted them.<\/strong>\n For Generals, the list became the basis of our next Scrum sprint, and \nthe overarching goals became our Scrum mission statement. For Vintage \n56, the list was more than could be handled by one team or one sprint, \nso it became the agenda for our weekly partner meetings where we decide \nwhat part of the creative world to conquer next. Finally, for myself, it\n became a list that I can compare to OmniFocus during my weekly review: \n\u201cAre these projects from OmniFocus in the list? Why or why not? Should I\n remove stuff from OmniFocus, move projects from the list to OmniFocus, \nor both? How am I doing on finishing these important goals?\u201d\n<\/li>\n<\/ol><p>In total, this little adventure of resetting my priorities and taking\n stock of an ever-changing situation \u201cset me back\u201d exactly one morning \nand two cups of coffee. I met up with everybody that same day for lunch,\n and we started talking about the things we wanted to build with a \nrefreshed vigor. Since then, we\u2019ve launched a new sprint at Generals \nfocusing on the items from the list, we\u2019ve started brainstorming two new\n (highly secret) projects for Vintage 56, and I found enough time to \nwrite this increasingly massive article about the whole process. Mainly,\n though, we are all operating with a renewed focus that will carry us \nnicely until the next half-day reboot is necessary (probably after I \nreturn from San Francisco).<\/p>\n<p>I can\u2019t say that everybody needs to do something like this very often, but I do have a few key recommendations:<\/p>\n<ol><li><strong>Keep a backlog of things you want to work on.<\/strong> It\n can be a someday\/maybe list, if you\u2019re really into GTD. In general, \nthough, I like the idea of a backlog from my software development days \nbecause backlogs are things that really should be done. It\u2019s not wishful\n thinking or dreams; these are projects that really matter, just not \ntoday.\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Have a list of what you\u2019re currently working on.<\/strong>\n If we do everything that comes along without keeping track, we \nundoubtedly spend a lot of time doing things that may not really matter.\n We need to be honest about where we spend our time.\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Finally, schedule an appointment with yourself to take stock and evaluate what you need to be working on.<\/strong>\n When we do client work, we get into the bad habit of coasting through \nmonths of client work and going completely idle afterwards without ever \nstopping to look at our bigger goals. This isn\u2019t smart for us as people,\n and it\u2019s not smart for our businesses. As a leader and a creative, it \nis our job to step back and evaluate what is really important at least a\n few times a year.\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>"",
"date_published": "2011-05-08T22:07:00-05:00",
"date_modified": "2020-09-27T14:13:21-05:00",
"author": {
"name": "jeremy"
}
} ]
}