 Good morning, Hank! It's Tuesday. So I've been writing stories fairly consistently since I was about eight years old, so this is a bit of a funny thing to say. But over the last six weeks, I re-realized that I really enjoy writing. Like, during my semi-secret sabbatical, I got a fair amount of writing done, and I loved it in a way I'd kind of forgotten about. So back in 2003, when I was working on the story that would eventually become Looking for Alaska and Sarah, and I were first becoming friends, she introduced me to the old line that all writing is rewriting. And this is true in at least two ways, right? Like, first off, for me anyway, most of what is good about a story emerges in revision. Like, I don't think I've ever written a paragraph that didn't need extensive revision, let alone a novel. Like, in 2003, I was writing a novel, I guess, but I wasn't writing Looking for Alaska because I deleted like 95% of the draft that I wrote in 2003 along the way to writing Looking for Alaska. But all writing is rewriting is also true in a more literal way, because even the initial act of writing something down is a kind of rewriting. You are taking ideas that exist inside of your mind and trying to find language for them. And that act of translating ideas into words is like revision in its most basic sense. It is a revisioning of thought into language. I really enjoy that process, and when it's working, I can enter a kind of flow state where I feel absolutely engrossed, which is a terrible word for a beautiful feeling. Sometimes I just think that we want what we don't have, and what I don't have is calm, and writing makes me feel calm in the way like puzzling or crafting might. And yes, of course, there are many moments of frustration. Why did I paint myself into this corner? Why can't I solve this plot problem? Once again, I find myself up against the limits of my own talents and etc. But for me, the engrossed calm more than makes up for those times of frustration. But that's the thing I sort of knew about myself before returning to fiction writing. The thing I had forgotten is how much I enjoy writing stories, even when I'm not writing them. Because when I'm working on a story, I have something to think about. Like, when I'm going to bed and my thoughts are racing, I am less likely to get stuck on obsessive fears because I can think about what might happen in the story. When I'm driving alone, I can listen to podcasts, but I don't need to listen to podcasts because I don't need to be distracted from my thoughts. Instead, I often find that I want to be alone with my thoughts, that I want to let my mind drift around and see what it can find because I'm thinking about the story. Now to be clear, the vast majority of thoughts I have while letting my mind wander are terrible, like I think of plot solutions that seem brilliant in the moment but are absolutely ridiculous. And sometimes I even write these ideas down with, like, no awareness that they're ridiculous, as in the first draft of The Fault in Our Stars where a girl and her favorite author team up to take down a drug lord? I wrote that. I wrote that scene and at no point in writing it did I think, this is stupid. So it's not like these are high quality thoughts, but they are nonetheless fun thoughts to have. And so one of the gifts writing stories gives me, one that I don't get as much from writing nonfiction, is the joy of pure imagination, what in my childhood was known as make believe? I love that phrase so much, by the way, it feels like an order. Make. Believe. So what else happened over the last six weeks? A lot of family stuff, a lot of work. I rehabbed my foot, which is now wearing a normal shoe instead of a boot, even if it isn't totally recovered. Oh, also I got to spend some glorious minutes filling out the semi-annual Nerdfighteria census. Hank, this was an unusually wonderful census, and not only because you included questions such as, how do we solve a problem like Waluigi? It's hard to overstate the importance of the census because it helps us to understand the values and priorities of the community so that hopefully we can reflect those back in our work. And over the years it has had a huge impact on everything from Crash Course to our work with Partners in Health, so if you've already filled out the census, thank you. If you haven't there's a link in the doobly-doo. Hank, I'll see you on Friday.