Hello friends —

This is my third successfully-weekly newsletter in April. Perhaps this is premature, but I think I can feel the habit being carved into my mind, and have really found a lot of joy in typing these up, sending them off, and seeing what you have to say in reply! Honestly, something I look forward to every Monday.

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As I write this, news has begun to come in that the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris is on fire. There's shocking, terrible video; the smoke billowing out like a volcano, drifting across the water — the spire falling as on-lookers watch in shock.

I'm not at all Catholic or even religious in that way, but for me, seeing the images and video are profoundly sad, almost visceral. It's like watching the weight of history collapse.

Of course, the fire will stop. Something will remain, even if what's left is shockingly minor compared to the massive structure it once was. And it will be rebuilt. So many of these famous structures have undergone damage, sometimes total destruction, only to be re-constructed in a new form. There's entire temples in Japan that are rebuilt ritualistically every 20 years.

Of course, this is little comfort for the events unfolding. What can we even say? Is there comfort in knowing something will be remade? Maybe so, but it doesn't negate the loss of what we have.

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I'm starting to plant a few forthcoming bylines for book reviews — right now I think I've got three on the horizon. This is not only exciting for what it is, the chance to cover and analyze a book that others will read, or what it might mean, the first buddings of a real writing future, but a sense that everything "is going to be okay", as Don Draper would put it.

Most of us, artists especially, are looking for some sense of reassurance, validation even. So many of these big sorts of projects — large canvases, manuscripts-in-progress, feature films, etc — are done largely or entirely solo. Like chipping away at the wall of a cave. I think of the writers who work on novels for years, a decade, even! — and stand in awe of their resolve. My god, what titans! To work on something for that amount of time, you often lose sight of what the thing even is, never mind if its good or not. 

I'm not quite sure what it says about me, if anything, but I for one am glad to have some reassuarance I'm on the right path long before my novel will be ready for public eyes.

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Speaking of the novel, being at the starting line I picked up Jane Alison's "Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative" over the weekend and have been plowing through it in the meantime. I thought it would be good to get some more alternative structure reference points down while I'm still in the early stages, while the clay is still wet.

I've written against the three-act structure before, so Alison's book doesn't come as a revelation to me, but it's still interesting to see her examples, especially focusing on the possibilities for narrative specific to the wide-ranging form of the novel.

She falls into a few pitfalls, replacing Aristotle's too-reductive three-acts for some alternatives she pulls from another source, a book called "Patterns in Nature". Of course, these are just names she's applied to structures she's dissected well from numerous examples, but something of the implied-universality feels off to me. Of course, there's patterns in nature, but doesn't quantum physics defy the notion of determinism? 

This is a minor quibble for an interesting, well-researched, and hopefully helpful book. I'm excited to apply her ideas to my work.

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Thinking about writing, about form, at the microscopic level has made me think about another aspect of writing so often taken for granted— the focus on our "concrete" senses. In writing, we're often shown how adding sensory details can add to the "realness" of the scene. What we would see, smell, hear, feel, and sometimes even taste, were we in the work.

Two things — for one, this also has a side effect. The more sensory details you add, the more concrete the world of the writing feels, and also the slower time feels to the reader. Think about it: most people who aren't writers don't consciously take in and consider that many details about a given scene before them, even if subconsciously their mind digests all this information. So to add more than normally perceived adds a weight to the work, time must be slowed to take that much in we wouldn't get in a glance.

The second, and to me the more potent — the five senses is a lie. Not in the philosophical "our brain is synthesizing the world around us as much as we're taking it in rendering our perception a careful illusion" sort of way (but come on, that's true). Rather, I mean the idea we're limited to five senses is a common misunderstanding; one of these pop-science facts that the public takes and runs with. 

There's plenty other examples of these factoids that make the rounds. I'm sure you've heard of "fight or flight", supposedly the two natural reactions we have for any given situation, and of course, also a fallacy. (It would be pretty difficult to build relationships if the only reactions you had to others was to run away or try and fight them.)

However, it's the sensory illusion that feels most intimate to me. After all, senses are our primary connection to the world.

We've got dozens of senses beyond the ones that get a dedicated organ. You have a sense of balance (equilibioception), a sense of temperature (thermoception), of time (chronoception) a sense of agency, and so on. Funnily enough, it's Aristotle we can thank for this misunderstanding, too. 

My favorite forgotten sense is called proprioception. It's a sort of kinetic spacial awareness of where your body exists. If you close your eyes, you can still touch your nose, despite not being able to see, smell, hear, taste, or feel your hand or your nose. You just know.

Of course, these things are much harder to convey in the written word than the smell of a storm, the taste of a peach, the warmth of sitting on the grass in the sunlight. What would proprioception even look like on the page? I'm not sure, but I'd like to figure it out. 

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A friend of mine asked on twitter what the last essay I wrote was... and I realize, it has been a while. Through this newsletter and a project in the works, I have been trying to write more for you guys to read, but I would like to get back to writing longform pieces on a topic that interests me, or whatever has been lodged in my mind for a few days.

It's these sorts of pieces I've had the hardest trouble placing with a publisher. I haven't sold a story yet, but there's a whole network for fiction. These pieces aren't quite personal essay, they're not reported pieces, they're not editorials... I'm not sure. For now, they're drifters, and I shall give them a home. (If anyone has any tips on outlets that might be interested in pieces like my essay on the depressing nature of computers, or storytelling in videogames, hit the reply button!)

Anyways, until that time I'd like to flesh out some of the ideas I've been turning over. What would you like to read about? Here's some ideas from my notebook:

• On the fallacy of five senses, and how they can be leveraged in narrative (Basically a longer piece on the above!)
• On how Game of Thrones has achieved true mythic status on account of lacking a definitive, authorial version. 
• On the two types of accessibility in videogames.

Just a few ideas. Any of them pique your interest? Reply and let me know what you want to read, and I'll write it up.

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Thanks again for reading. Good luck with the coming week, and as always, send me your thoughts on the ideas I've written here.

Your faithful commander,
— I

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