October 10th, 2022 - Take Half, Leave Half

Dear TNY,

Another Monday comes rolling in and I started it with “Take Half, Leave Half” (just kidding, I started it with two jerk sessions, a blowie, and some P in V, my guy; but I did eventually get around to your story).

And it’s okay.  I really appreciate that you published something that wasn’t some bullshit writer’s life in NYC.  I mean, this story represents a group of people you hardly ever talk about, and I like that.  So, in that way it was fresh.  Different from your normal wasted efforts.

But it’s still just meh.  This story covers so much narrative time in 4800 words that the author is forced to use summary almost throughout.  As we have covered a million times, only on the rare occasion does that allow the reader to create empathy for the MC (protagonist, JAM; so sorry for using MC).  So while I like hearing about this world, this story’s pacing is fucked because it’s trying to cover too much goddamn ground.  And that’s annoying because I think with some Lishing, this story could have walked a line and then turned the corner nicely.  Now it’s just a bunch of information.  And it feels like a bunch of information.  Like an outline for a fucking novel or a summary of a screenplay or some shit.  And that, TNY, is a disservice to the story.

Also, this felt like the author spent a lot of time thumbing through the cowboy’s thesaurus.  And, I don’t know, for me some of it was good (side note:  I’ve been doing a slow crawl through the show Yellowstone so a lot of this jargon as well as the locations and mannerisms were familiar to me and I liked that aspect, which, I know isn’t a measure for good or bad art or anything, just a nice little addition for me) and some of it was bad.  I couldn’t help but think of Rick Bass when I was reading this, specifically “In Ruth’s Country”.  And for my money, Bass does this kinda thing better than is done here.

What I guess I’m saying is that I appreciate that you changed it up this week.  Thank you.  But this story was only good at reminding me how much better these types of stories can be.  And it was just another summary driven piece, which I know you love.  But I fucking don’t.

And, the van.

I drove 30 miles.  Everything seems tip top except for one small adjustment to the butterfly valve in the throttle body.  Which, I don’t know.  I may need a new one because too much air might be going around the valve and I can’t adjust it away.  To be clear, this is a minor idle problem.  And it idles fine.  It just pulls a little too much fuel at idle to make up for the extra air.  The moment I hit the pedal, fueling goes back to normal and shit’s cool.  It’s weird driving him again.  Like, super weird.  Feels like, you know, a home of sorts.  We’ll see how it goes today with the adjustment.

Anyway, keep the changes coming.  Stop with that other shit you are doing and bring some more different shit out.  I worked for a guy named Lenfesty a long time ago.  And we had these aftermarket cigarette lighters that we needed to install in our rigs.  And after a couple of months, they all failed.  So he had me look at them and I told him that I likely could fix them, but I was going to have to take them apart to fix them.  And that taking them apart may break them.  And he looked at me and said, “They don’t fucking work now.  Who cares if you break them?”  Do that.  Your magazine is broken now.  Might as well try new shit to fix it.

On that note, I’ll stop being so afraid of the throttle body and get outside.

Later.

Nick