Do you have a word you use as a stand-in, like “blah blah blah” but for writing instead of speaking? In computer science, people often use “foo” and “bar” but I’m not a big fan of those because there’s no natural way of distinguishing them from each other. At some point in the past couple months I have started exclusively using “horse” and “cow” for this purpose. So you can be certain that at some point the following stories were titled something like “horse cow horse” before I got around to titling them properly.
The Brass Nerve, 3 & 4
These stories have been a great place to experiment with the balance of dialogue and narration. Part 3 could have been entirely dialog, potentially, though hopefully the romance between Jane and Rick consists of more than just talking at each other. I bet you’re wondering what Rick does when family visit his apartment. Do they know about the other door? I’m glad you asked, now excuse me while I brainstorm answers for Part 5.
I took a break after Part 4, though I have some specific outlines of 5 and 6. At this point I’m guessing that Part 7 will be the last chapter of The Brass Nerve, but what I have planned may spill over to (at most) Part 10. There are still many mysteries left for Jane to solve, though, so we can be pretty sure that Brass Tax will be one of my terrible titles at some point. Other contenders: The Color of Brass, Brass Backwards, and The Brass is Always Greener.
Appendix C
Sometimes when I’m falling asleep my inner-dreamologue becomes me trying to explain a concept to someone with no relevant background knowledge. This phenomenon is also known as “dinner with my dad.” This story came out of one those dreams, which probably got conflated with the mania of House of Leaves which I finished reading recently. In a similar vein, I started writing this story with a lot of excitement, got about one paragraph in, and hit a wall of madness and frustration. It’s quite hard to mix technical instruction and life experiences. Choosing a restrictive voice may not have been a good idea; the condescending old man probably only deserved 300 words.
Value
This is one of my favorite stories so far, but I think I could have made it a bit more lean. When I was crafting it in my head the narration was closer to The Boy Who Cried Wolf in simplicity, so I hope that parable-vibe comes off at least a bit. What is the moral of this story, though? [Spoiler alert] Does the young man go back and steal money? Does he find joy in burying money as well? Will that bank teller ever finish writing his opera? These are questions you can pose to your children after reading this story to them.
Harmless Writing 