It’s amazing looking over the notebooks for the last 400+ days and realizing that you’ve been running in circles for over year, hoping to find some unrefined truth hidden in the scorched and mulched ruins of what you were once absolutely certain was a interesting, slightly complicated, but no less important idea.

Is completing a book like killing it? Is editing one like torching a family member, or is it more like emulsifying some kind of former friend? Do I free myself from it by finishing it? Does it selling well count as flowers on its grave or piss soaked mounds of black earth beneath its shallow mossy grave?

I can’t say I’m certain that books want to kill their masters, but I am more than comfortable saying that they are not dissimilar in attribute to properly forged swords.

If you are confident and careful you will find yourself a friend. If you find yourself nervous and doubting the power of what is in your hands you should probably figure some shit out before attempting any grand and all-or-nothing endeavor.

Once started all questions, lessons, and aid become like ornate boundaries standing in the way of the hunt for that purity of soul and feeling that comes with having created something whole.

P.S. Books are hard. I’ve made some terrible decisions and have been and will likely remain oblivious to what true talent looks like.