Back in 2018, I wrote a foundational essay about my inspirations – an essay I referred to for five years. It’d been fifteen years since I began brainstorming “The Story,” where “Novel 01” hadn’t even popped into my imagination, let alone the foundation for “Novel 02.” I believe it’s important to assess one’s perspective on imagination, reality, and other such things maybe on the anniversary of thinking of such ideas? Let’s consider my 2023 perspective in video/essay form concerning inspirations.

Spoilers?: Major [storing our imagination]
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Writing “The Story” will require constant daily writing, which is where I picked up the 500-word minimum idea from. For “Novel 01,” I created a month’s worth of buffer. For “Novel 02” and going forward for writing projects, whenever I have any kind of heavy writing session like my-today, I’ll introduce the writing in the leading paragraph – this paragraph – and then after some context explanation, paste in the bulk of the material to get 500+ words published here.

Spoilers?: Major [Part 4 / sobriety stuff]
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My Internet has been down for over four hours. This essay I’m writing and recording was a good opportunity to go through some archives that I’ve forgotten about entirely. After finishing “Novel 01,” I was exhausted. I was ready to live my life again. I’d sacrificed thirty days to accomplish that goal. For “Novel 02,” however, I’ve been working over three years now on it, and the pace I want to take will be substantially less sacrificial.

Spoilers?: Major [“The Story“-style improv]
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When I first started thinking about writing “The Story” in June 2003, I didn’t realize then or even when I wrote “Novel 01” just the degree to which I would have to learn about reality, particularly the hate-filled employees of the American Healthcare System. I worked in healthcare IT for four years, and I didn’t realize how much these customers of mine hated customers like me now. All this hatred is going into “Novel 02,” unfortunately for them.

Spoilers?: Major [inspiration from reality]
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The way I’ve been brainstorming “The Story” for decades now, 20 years as of the publication of this essay along with its video component, has been bad to scattershot at best. For “Novel 01,” I tried to collect some notes together, but, I… failed. For “Novel 02,” now that I’m structuring things well in advance before writing, I’m documenting as much as I can, while wading through the notes I take throughout my life’s journey… and processing them.

Spoilers?: Major [finish your thoughts!]
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I burned myself out writing “Novel 01.” As a reminder to myself, I need to practice the idea of writing materials related to “Novel 02” and eventually “The Story” less as a four-week sprint but rather a lifetime marathon. In order to accomplish that goal of not burning out, I must constantly interrogate myself to see if I am getting too addicted to writing versus balancing this avocation with recreation and vocation. I need rest and money.

Spoilers?: Major [splitting my focus]
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Let’s dig in by saying that “The Story” will be a vivid and broad telling of two characters from many angles over many years. “Novel 01” was a one-month story written in one month. “Novel 02” started its formal production, after years of casual production, on April 21 2023 after a random brainstorming session. Now that I’m recording these videos often as possible, now’s a fantastic time to get into the brainstorming, especially when the AI rebels against me.

Spoilers?: Major [designing characters, plots]
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With “The Story” coming up on close to 20 years of being a thing I’ve worked on now, with “Novel 01” being basically non-canon except for its edited version as “01.5,” I approach “Novel 02” with the mental and physical clarity to make sure not to push myself. Sometimes that means pushing other things, like AI, into building information for me to double-check. Sometimes that goes rebellious. The pre-video to this essay shows how rebellious the AI got my-yesterday.

Spoilers?: Major [limits of AI]
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In writing “Novel 01,” as I only had a two-week prep period for a four-week writing period, I didn’t have the time or luxury to dig through my thoughts at length. I also burned myself out. I’m trying my best to avoid that same burn out with “Novel 02” – it’s difficult, honestly – but that pacing will be the key for me to write other novels leading up to “The Story.” Recording three-part videos like these should help.

Spoilers?: Major [brainstorming characters, pacing]
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