Jay Sennett's Blog

Erle Stanley Gardner, originator of the 20th century America’s favorite lawyer Perry Mason, wrote like a fiend on speed. His output as a writer boggles the mind. Every year he aimed to write 1.2 million words. You read that correctly. 1,200,000 words, which breaks down to 100,000 words a month or about 3,300 words a day.

He wrote those 3,300 words in addition to working as part of an active legal practice in Southern California. Gardner also devoted thousands of hours to “The Court of Last Resort.”  He and other lawyers , forensic experts and investigators used their experience and expertise to free men they believed had been wrongfully convicted because of poor legal representation, abuse, misinterpretation of forensic evidence, or careless or malicious actions of police or prosectors.

Gardner died in 1970, and at that time was the most published author in America during the 20th century. He wrote fiction under seven different pseudonyms plus his own name and pounded out short stories for pulp magazines and fiction books. His combined total is more than 600 published works. The Perry Mason series of novels provided him with the bulk of his income and notoriety. The television show based on the novels became a huge hit in the 1950s.

His output daunts even the most prolific authors working today. Workaholic that he was he needed to think about plot as little as possible in order to produce 1,000,000 words a year. To do this, he created one of the greatest plotting hacks in the history of detective fiction: four cardboard plotting wheels to keep the plots thick, heavy and exciting. 

Gardner crafted round pieces of cardboard with an arrow attached by a brass grommet in the center of the circle: the wheel of blind trials, the wheel of hostile minor characters, the wheel of solutions, and the wheel of complicating circumstances. He then spun the arrow on each wheel and out of chance arrived the plot for his next novel. 

The wheels work as plot generators for two reasons. Gardner understood the conventions of his genre.

Mason faced hostile characters like a hotel detective or a hick detective, but never nature or a horrifying monster. He also understood (and here I speculate) that plot tropes could be reused. Given the total number of options on the four wheels, he had 9,834,496 possible permutations for a novel. With the thinking about the plot out of the way Gardner freed himself to write productively.

His wheels got me so excited I wanted to write them down for my own novel writing endeavors. But when I increased the size of the photos housed at the University of Texas website, I found the images illegible and gave up. By chance I found the website of author Karen Woodward and the article she wrote describing all the points on the four wheels.  Call me thrilled. I quote them below.

For other genre writers here at Author’s Electric do you know any romance, fantasy or horror authors who created genre-specific wheels or other plotting hacks for their writing?

Courtesy of Karen Woodward

The Wheel Of Hostile Minor Characters Whose Function Is Making Complications For The Hero

These folks put obstacles in the hero’s way, make it difficult for her to reach her goal.

1. Hick detective.

2. Attorney.

3. Newspaper reporter.

4. Detective.

5. Business rival.

6. Rival in love.

7. Father of heroine.

8. Blackmailer.

9. Gossip.

10. Meddlesome friend.

11. Suspicious servant.

12. Hostile dog.

13. Spy.

14. Incidental crook.

15. Hotel detective.

16. Thickheaded police.

B. Wheel Of Complicating Circumstances

1. Hero is betrayed to villain by spies.

2. Every move the hero makes takes him from the frying pan and puts him into the fire.

3. Heroine’s maid is a spy.

4. Father of heroine is hostile to the hero.

5. Detective believes the hero is guilty and tries to arrest him/her at a critical time.

6. Hero commits an incidental crime. For example, he/she is caught speeding and is arrested.

7. Witness mistakes hero for villain.

8. Hero violates the law and is sought.

9. Heroine’s mind is poisoned against the hero.

10. Some character is not as represented.

11. Rival in love tries to discredit the hero.

12. Zeal of hick cop upsets plans.

C. The Wheel of Blind Trials By Which The Hero Is Mislead or Confused

1. Witness lies.

2. A document is forged.

3. A witness is planted.

4. A client conceals something.

5. A client misrepresents something.

6. A friend pretends to betray the hero.

7. The villains assistant pretends to betray the hero.

8. A vital witness refuses to talk.

9. False confessions.

10. Genuine mistakes.

11. A witness takes flight.

12. A witness is kidnapped.

13. A witness commits suicide.

14. A witness sells out.

15. Planted clues.

16. Impossible statements.

D. Solution Wheel

How the hero surmounts the obstacles thrown in his way.

1. Gets villain to betray himself through greed.

2. Gets the villain , of his own free will, to plant additional evidence.

3. Plants fake evidence to confuse the villain.

4. Fakes circumstances so the villain will think he/she has been discovered.

5. Tricks the hero’s accomplice into confessing.

6. Villain is hoist by his/her own petard.

7. Villain killed while he/she is trying to frame someone.

8. Gets villain to overreach himself/herself.

9. Meets trickery with horse-sense.

10. Squashes obstacles by sheer courage.

11. Turns villains against each other.

12. Traps [tricks?] villain into betraying a hiding place. Hero either a) creates a fake fire, or b) gives him/her something else to conceal, or c) makes it necessary for the villain to flee (and so must take something out of the hiding place).

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Sylvia Rivera, the great mother our transgender movement, besides fighting cops and heterosexual bigotry, fought with courage, anger and determination against rampant transphobia within the gay and lesbian communities in the 1970s, 80s and 90s.

In this video I found on YouTube, she addresses a very hostile white gay and lesbian crowd in New York City.

“Y’all better quiet down,” she begins as the crowd shouts at her and boos her and seemingly wants her gone, preferably forever, I imagine.

You tell me to go and hide my tail between my legs. I will no longer put up with this shit.
I have been beaten. I have been raped
I have had my nose broken.
I have lost my job.
I have lost my apartment for gay liberation.
And you all treat me this way? What the fuck’s wrong with you?

Her cri de coeur speaks to battle lines that still exist within the larger LGB communities and remains as powerful and necessary today as it was 45 years ago. Apparently the white, middle-class gays and lesbian she excoriates at Washington Square didn’t get it then.

Many still don’t get it today. They prefer to remember only half of Ms. Rivera’s legacy. The one where she fought back against the heterosexual police at the Stonewall Bar.

Her other legacy, the one captured in this video, remains one white LGB and now T people forget, overlook or never knew it in the first place to forget it.

I had the great honor of seeing Sylvia Rivera at the 1994 Stonewall Parade, the one where participants defied police and city orders and  walked down 5th Avenue, like all the other parades in NYC did, except the city decided the 25th Anniversary of Stonewall parade should take a second-class route.

The mainstream gays capitulated and walked on the stupid, alternate route the city wanted them to take.

Not Sylvia Rivera. She had been saying No to power her entire life. She wasn’t about to change her behavior to make a bunch of middle-class queers help city officials feel comfortable.

Wearing a gorgeous, gold sequined, form-fitting evening gown, Sylvia Rivera strolled by us in high-heels. We shouted and clapped and screamed I Love You, Sylvia as tears streamed down her face. We knew who she was and what she had done for us.

Her impact on transgender history looms so large I can’t imagine a me without her. 

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How have you moved your art making forward this week?  Below are several things I think worth sharing about progressive art- and culture-making. Call this list Curated Reading in Progressive Art and Culture.

Comedian Raneir Pollard wants to see more gay assassins in movies. He proceeds to show us how they will get the job done.Jean-Michel Basquiat’s eclectic musical tastes. “Bowie, Back and Bebop: How Music Powered Basquiat” discusses the Barbican’s exhibit about Basquiat’s relationship to music. Jazz loomed large in Basquiat’s creative pantheon. Music drives much of my creative process. How about you? From McSweeney’s. “List: If People Talked About Other Things the Way They Talk About Gender Identity.”

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Writing day after day after requires focus, discipline and physical exertion. The ease with which I can distract myself from these behaviors continues to amaze me. I can even make writing a kind of distraction, particularly when I jump from one genre of writing to another.

Each genre of writing, whether it is poetry, screenwriting (fiction and documentary), nonfiction (how-to, memoir, essays, magazine articles, history and so on), fiction or short stories, have their own requirements and expectations.

I’ve written two screenplays, several novels, many magazine articles and memoir essays. What a crazy decision in retrospect. Going broadly might have benefits for others. But for me I’ve merely attained mediocrity across several genres. Nice, right?!?

Learning how to write screenplays or short stories or narrative essays takes time and practice. Working on that form for awhile, only to put it aside to try my hand at memoir or fiction or short stories or whatever shiny chicken catches my attention, fails to deepen my skills in a particular genre. If practice is the artist’s equivalent of a woodworker sharpening a saw, then my approach is like honing a knife with a rock.

Sure, some parts of the edge may sharpen up. But the entire length of the blade, and the overall ability of the knife to cut, remains dull.

The stopping and starting and stopping and starting in various genres has taught me a very important writing lesson, though, perhaps the most important one I’ve ever learned.  It is easier to keep going if I choose a few forms and work in those genres consistently.

I know what I need to do. I simply struggle to do it.

Truthfully I never struggle with a writing problem. But I do battle with a Jay problem like every minute of every day with made-up excuses about why I can’t stick to my chosen genres or why I can’t write today.

Thus, the problem of writing is a problem of Jay (feel free to insert your name here).

I’ve been meditating off and on (mostly off) for many years. Meditation has taught me to watch my thoughts, exposing me to how much time I spend ignoring the present, choosing instead to watch the dramatic films in my head, filled as they are with ego wounds, lost opportunities and regrets.

Today I’m feeling bored and want to give up on novel writing?

Cue up Reel Number 4672: Boredom stars in this one as the enemy, with the Protagonist cast as the Sheeny, Shiny, Bright and Burnished new genre aka the best genre evah!

“Over there the sunshiny genre awaits. One in which you will be expert without even trying! Pulitzers are yours! Over there you’ll never be a bored, scared, tired writer,” the film whispers in a continuous loop.

But then cue up Reel Number 5795 starring Consistency, Perseverance and Hope as the hero. Meditating hips me to the reality of both films running in my mind head. If my luck stays awake, she’ll remind me to breath and pay attention. 

Otherwise, I get caught up in the drama generated by the seeming opposition between these two movies. The tension tightens and tightens and tightens and oh, look! Here’s Facebook and Instagram and Netflix and the Laundry pushing a quick fix.

The Fix, cast in the role of the friend who is really the villain, temporarily loosens the tension, hiding from me this multi-layered drama playing out in my own mind. The Fix distracts with lures like tv binge watching (“I’m researching an article”), or mindlessly scrolling through Facebook (“Where is that article I want to quote???”) or even doing so-called good things like cleaning or raking the leaves (“I’m a good person when I tend to my home chores”).

The Fix creates the effect I desire. Numbing my self to myself I generate surface noise. The deeper tensions, the fruitful stresses  and the creative pressures that might led to better and stronger writing disappear — again — in a wave of dope.

Meditation teaches me how create a spaciousness around the films in my head, so that after some time I am less likely to find myself in their thrall.

The spaciousness created between the meditating/observing me and the me sitting in the audience caught up in my own films can allow me me to slip out of the theater. Then I can recommit to my chosen genres, face the struggle and write. It doesn’t always happen like that. But when it does I feel a deep moral/spiritual victory.

The work of creating mental spaciousness is always a spiritual one, which is why the work of becoming a successfully published writer is, for me, a spiritual one, too.

I continue to learn a lot about myself, much of it meritless. Like how hypocritical I am, how much personal responsibility I lack and how I snort The Fix, almost perpetually.

So Caveat Scriptor, I tell myself know. Let the writer, beware. To become a better, more productive writer, I must become a better, more productive versions of myself.

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Here’s the thing: I am a published author and co-owner of a publishing company. I know about writing; rewriting; rejection; not knowing what to write; not writing at all; writing a ton of crap; submitting articles for journal consideration; pitching article ideas to online publications; being cold-called to write for an online publication; debating whether or not I should give up writing; wondering why I spent the first 30 years of my life (I’m 53 at this writing) avoiding writing; embracing the suck of writing; asking myself whether I should pursue an MFA or take online classes (I’ve opted for the latter); and figuring out to the time management conundrum.

My writing career began in 1997 when Tracy Baim asked me to write a column for the Nightlines/Outlines, Chicago’s biweekly LGBTQ newspaper. I’ve been blogging off and on since 2006, published a well-received anthology in 2006, started a publishing company the same year, worked for Gentleman’s Gazette in the early teens. In 2018 I published Moxie, a memoir series about my life changing genders. I also write for One Love, Author’s Electric and Queer Majority.

With the exception of pitching a completed manuscript to a publisher, I’ve done just about everything else one can do as a self-published writer. I know about book marketing questions, the automated email responder questions, the who is my ideal reader questions, the why do I have to market at all questions.

And of course, the existential questions: why is their book a selling so much more than my book? Why am I writing at all? What do I want to write? Why do I want to write?

Then there are the where do I find my tribe questions. I live in a small-ish town in Michigan, near the University of Michigan, without a ready-made writing community. I hate online groups. Nothing personal. But online behaves as a gateway drug for me, the portal through which I mainline so many Youtube videos, Facebook posts and Instagram feeds I could probably recoup five years of my life and several pounds of self-esteem.

I know about the struggles and the triumphs and the chronic disease that writing is.

I know deep within my marrow how not to write.

I’ve tried hundreds of tips, tricks and hacks to keep writing. I’ve invested gobs of time reading about writing tips, tricks and hacks. They get a bad rep. Most writers offering these tips publish essays, blog posts and books about writing tips, tricks and hacks. And little else.

The hacksters are hucksters. I get it. They also waste our time. We spend so much time reading about writing, we don’t write our own words. Welcome to Scribbler’s Paradise, the fine line between seeking writing help and wasting time.

I confess to both, though. Yet I overflow with gratitude that such tips exist. Writing tips have pushed me when I needed a shove. Helped me to write when I wanted to give up. Made starting again exciting and worthwhile.

I offer a few of my favorites.

Keep writing no matter what. If you stop for a month, start again on day 31. Obliterate distractions in your life. Facebook? Kill it. Twitter? Who cares. Maybe after you’ve strengthened your writing muscles and your focus, then go back to these platforms, but not before. Don’t compare yourself. You write what you write at the pace that your write it. Focus on finishing and publishing. Find the most reputable outlet for your words and publish there. Pile on the work so you have no time to fret. Embrace the loneliness of writing. Your family and friends can only wish you bon voyage. You must push away from the shore and head for the beach on the other side, knowing you will never make it.

Read. Read. Read. Read how you want to write. Know what you want to write. If you want to write military thillers, read Tom Clancy. Small mini-plots with multiple points of view? Virginia Woolf. Epics addressing questions of human behavior in inhuman systems? Toni Morrison. You get the picture. Create goals for your words and follow them. Know that most days you will write so much terrible you’ll wonder where the point might lie. Get up the next day and do it again. 

You’re a pro. And that’s what pros do.

Don’t spend much time reading about writing hacks. Do the work instead.

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When the Trump Administration revealed their latest gambit to deny transgender and transsexual people our civil rights, I revisited the biological science of transsexuality. Trump wants to require anyone who claims they are trans* to take a DNA test to determine their sex chromosomes. If a person like me wants to use the men’s room but my DNA test states I am female, or XX, well then, tough shit.

So says the Trump administration.

I’ve never had a DNA test with regard to my sex chromosomes. My mother gifted me a 23 and me test. That’s it. For all I know I am XX. In my marrow I feel male and have felt that way my entire life.

What’s my gender again?

For a long time I fought against my biology, arguing that science is socially-constructed, as if somehow doing so allowed me to disregard facts I don’t like. I even went so far as to state I disbelieved biology, that I am truly a man.

The truth is more complicated. Reconciling a life-long belief I am a man won’t dissipate by administering a sex chromosome test. I’m not deluded. I’m a transsexual. That means, among other things, I lack a traditionally male body.

My doctor enjoined me to take more calcium at an annual checkup. Because I have had a full hysterectomy and oophorectomy, I should, according to her, take the same dosage “as a post-menopausal middle-aged woman.”

Those were fighting words a few years back. Now, though, I believe there is some merit in her statement. I have never had a traditionally male body. Ever.

My body is male now, as male as it can be with surgeries and hormones. But I can’t conceive of how my current male body is a result of biology being socially-constructed or a mistake not worthy of my attention.

For the first 30 some years of my life, I had mostly (I assume) a  traditionally female body. Without a definitive sex test, I can’t know for sure. But I did menstruate, have chocolate cravings, get mocked because of my butch gender presentation. All that is gone. The disposition of my body to put fat on my hips is gone, too. The fat now goes to the stomach, just like a guy.

In truth, though, no longer producing estrogen with a daily testosterone overlay via Androgel is not the same as producing testosterone via gonads.

I am entitled to my own opinions about my body and my psyche. I am not entitled to my own facts.

I know. I’m slow on the uptake. Maybe I fought against biology to suppress my own internalized transphobia. For years  I fought against being a transsexual. Now I’m happy with my gender.

The great experiment continues.

I know that my doctor and my family and friends and I will continue to fight on behalf of me and all transsexuals and transgender people. If I am XX, that will be okay. Being XX won’t obviate how male I am in public and in private, too. Really, the people in the Trump Administration living in fear of me don’t want me in the women’s bathroom.

Maybe we transsexuals are super heroes.

XX Man! XY Woman! To the rescue. Fighting for freedom, love and the right to be left alone in the bathroom.

I drew this cartoon sometime in 2012. It appeared in an article different from this one at a another point in time.

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Bowties caught my fancy about ten years ago. I took every opportunity to wear them. People complimented me on them. A few men told me how they didn’t have the balls to wear them.

I don’t have any balls, I wanted to say. But I didn’t. Probably for the best, too.

What I never heard was anyone telling me the bowtie made me look fat. In fact, people stopped negatively commenting on my clothing after I lived as a man. As a woman they did it all the time.

Oh dresses would make you look more feminine

If you dressed differently people would treat you better

The fact that people treated me differently as a man than as a woman forced me to eat one of the biggest shit sandwiches of my transsexual career.

Chomping down on the nasty feces sandwich I got pissed. Like kind of transsexual pissed. Like where I hated the world and everyone in it kind of pissed.

99% of the time I got treated more badly as a woman than as a man. But as a man everybody thought I had something to say.

Like why do you want to talk with me now?!? You never did before, when I was a woman. When I was a woman you barely acknowledged me.

I felt the same inside, but my outside made everyone treat me differently. Now I knew this was going to happen. I knew as a female to male transsexual people would act like they were interacting with a man when they connected with me.

Of course. I wanted that.

What infuriated me was how shallow people were. I truly felt the same on the inside. My outside changed and wham!

Okay, sir

Whatever you want, sir

What do you think, Jay

The utterly disrespectfully execrable manner in which we treat women exploded in my face. Without me even trying.

I drew the cartoon below to explain the hard truth of male-female relationships.

It isn’t that men are from Mars and women are from Venus. It’s that women are on the ground and men keep crushing their face into the pavement.The crushing comes in all kinds of actions. Everything from rape to bad jokes about vaginas. I experienced a lot of double-standards regarding clothing and my gender.

So, does this bowtie make me look fat?

I originally published this piece in 2006 in a very different format in a place far, far away.

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I’m working on a novel and mostly working on understanding what the heck I’ve gotten myself into. Long a nonfiction author, I had believed the shift no more challenging than moving from an essay to a book. 

Fiction requirements like plot points, story arcs and character development do exist in nonfiction, I knew, so hard could it be, really? (I will wait for all the fiction writers to wipe the tears from their eyes.)

Having written screenplays in the past I understand plotting fairly well and loving mysteries and thrillers as I do makes plotting easier, for me at least.

The biggest bugaboo has been character development. 

The best thrillers possess great character arcs.. “Silence of the Lambs” ranks as one of my personal favorites and combineses both a great plot and a great character arc. 

But again and again character development and character change has left me scratching my head. I’ve written outline upon outline, character sketches, mini-drafts, and stream of consciousness documents. I had no hook around which I could understand character development and change.

Then, as if the Muse and her minions took pity on me, I read within two days Blake Snyder’s “Save the Cat” and a series of blog posts on the In and Out by Steven Pressfield. 

Here is Pressfield, in his first post, What’s The In? What’s The Out?:

In the movie biz, there’s a question that studios and development companies often put to any screenplay they’re evaluating:

What’s the in? What’s the out?

What they mean is, “What is this script’s opening image and closing image? Do the two work together? Are they cohesive? Are they on-theme? Are they are far apart emotionally as possible?”

And from In/Out, Part 2

Here is a rule, if you will:

The first rule of Ins and Outs Club is 

The Opening and Closing Images of our story should look as alike as reasonably possible. 

The second rule of Ins and Outs Club is 

At the same time, the Out should be as far away as we can make it, in emotional and narrative terms, from the In.

Pressfield uses the movie Shane as an example of the perfect Hollywood In and Out:

Last week we cited the opening and closing images from the 1953 Western Shane.

In the In, our hero, the gunfighter Shane (Alan Ladd), enters the Valley carrying aspirations for a better life. He hopes that in this new place he will be able to hang up his six-shooter and start afresh, be a normal person, maybe even find a wife and raise a family.

In the Out, Shane departs the valley by exactly the same route he entered. Only now he knows that that dream will not come true for him—not now, not ever.

In other words, this is exactly how an In and an Out should work.

The closing image resonates powerfully with the opening image—they are bookends really—but in emotional and narrative terms they are as far apart as they can possibly be.

Pressfield’s explanation of the In/Out images has transformed everything for me. I’ve reread this last line about a dozen times over the last two weeks. At some point both the In and Out images of my novel materialized in my head. 

Every question I’ve had and struggled with regarding my main character’s development fell into place once I had the novel’s in and out images.

Fiction doesn’t come naturally to me. I’ve never been a voracious reader. Don’t get me wrong, I love to read. But I think of myself as the world’s slowest reader.

To have this suggestion at the ready has made all the difference for me. I feel like I’ve just got my ticket punched and I’m now sitting in the third-class car of the great train of fiction.

I’m happy to finally be aboard.

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We grew up feeling different, out of sorts with our bodies. We just knew we were one way. Despite what family and church and doctors might say. It’s a phase you’ll grow out of, they said; it’s hard to be a girl, they said. The boys had it worse, much, much worse.

Whatever accommodations they tossed us like a raggedy bone stopped once we hit puberty. If we were lucky. When we weren’t we got cuffed and slapped and punched. No, you can’t wear that skirt. Boys don’t wear skirts. Shut up and act like a man! Never show weakness.

Most of us were ordinary kids. We overdrew our time account imaging how we could be and, with the right mix of timing and gumption, would be. We have always had an image in our mind of how we should be in the world.

Some of us were from cities like New York or Chicago, with gay community centers and pride parades, where we could disappear into a crowd of people and feel grateful we didn’t grow up in some hick town up- or downstate. Some of us grew up Hemet or Mio, populated with one thousand people or fewer, where we were frozen by the gaze of our neighbors and hitchhiked out in the cab of the truck that came by once a week to deliver heating oil.

Some of us came from Berlin and cut out pictures of the clothes we would buy and wear freely, once we could. Some of us came from a farm collective outside Beijing, where we kept our hair short, always wearing the uniform of the PRC, singing the “East is Red.” Some of us are from Dubai and travel for business and pursue pleasure in places like Key West, finding blessed release in stockings and dresses and in the eyes of men who desire us.

Some of us evaporated in Hiroshima. Others immolated in Auschwitz. A few of us died from heatstroke working the fruit crops and still others during the Middle Passage. We fell on the fields of the Somme and El Alamein and the beaches of Normandy. Some of us overdosed and some of us drank ourselves to death. A few of us blew our brains out.

Some of us fought for the Nazis. Some of us fought for the Allies. We fought on both sides of the Civil War and in Ruwanda, Somalia, and Sudan. One of us hid in an orphanage to escape the slaughter of Jews. Another rode the Underground Railroad to freedom in Canada.

We have been around since 7000 B.C.E. The Bible tells us so.

They threaten us, most of us sometimes and a few of us a lot. The few of us hounded and murdered the most descend from the families of slaves or the fruit crop workers. Some of us lose all distinctions, the edges of our skin blending, believing all threats, from job loss to murder, the same threat. Nuance eludes the white of us.

We want to know about sex. Some of us are sexed a lot. Some of us are virgins. We wish there was number to call, 1-888-TRANSEX and all our questions could be answered by those who know from experience. How will it be after the surgery? Have you already had a lot of sex? You won’t have sex until after the surgery? Will anyone find us desirable? When do I tell them? Do I tell them? What if I do tell them and they don’t want me at all? And what if they want me even more? 

Julie Otsuka’s book The Buddha in the Attic transformed my understanding of what is possible as a writer and as a human being. Her work has inspired this piece.

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0% expectations. 100% effort. 

Can I write this way, always?

Never think about who might read my words?

Never worried about whether I’m good enough?

Never suffering over how bad I think I might be?

Scribbling words as fast as my mind goes. writing. writing. writing.

Can I write even if I never published another essay again, ever? Maybe the blogosphere will blow up. Or I will die. 

Or worse, can I publish and publish and publish and no one reads any of it?

Can I stand the rejection?

Can I keep writing anyway?

The scribbler’s paradise means we all eat the apple. Gain knowledge. Most of it terrifying and debilitating and scary.

But still we must.

0% expectations with 100% effort.

Go. Shut down the cutting mind. The discerning mind. Write. Write. Write.

Scribble all over the page. Messy. No punctuation no grammar words words words

Pause rest one hundred percent go go gogogogogogogo

Stop.

Rest.

Read.

Eat.

Move.

Sleep.

Tomorrow. 100% effort. 0% expectations.

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