The Artist's Way puzzle, humanism

I have solved the Artist's Way puzzle.

The puzzle was religion. I am religious but more in a way that makes me very happy in a forest and interested in talking to rocks. Nevermind! The problem is that Cameron tells you to supplement in your own religion and I can't because how she talks is monotheistic, closed, modern, and inaccessible without the desire to believe in God. I know it works for many people but for me it caused a problem. It made many passages awkward and some weeks I gained nothing because of my inability to accept her variety of spirituality.

So that was the puzzle. The solution is humanism. I was reading Week 7 and decided to supplement human kind for God. What it creates is a giddy variety of humanism which tells you that people want you to write. That you are writing for them. That human kind embraces art. It might not be true, but when is humanism ever entirely true. What is it? Beautiful, glorious optimism. It is Doctor Who saying 'I love people, people are incredible.' People can do everything wrong, cruel, and horrid. The power of Doctor Who is seeing that and still finding people incredible because sometimes they get it right. Messy, muddled, wonderful people!

Not that we do not have a great propensity for wrong, but sometimes it is important to think that we can get it right as well.

Galileo's persecution

Astrology is only as illogical as my childhood belief that trees created wind. The system, a complicated one, does not come from nowhere. It is based on an Aristotelian cosmology adopted and adapted by the Arabian intellectuals, from whom I believe we acquired astrology somewhere in the 12th century renaissance. When the Aristotelian cosmology was replaced this was not because it was 'hockie superstitution,' but on the good scientific reason of it simply not having as efficient predictive powers when you treated the planets on a spherical orbit as an elliptical one. Astrology was a necessary cost of adopting a more efficient astronomical theory.

I studied Galileo. I did not understand. I know that the Church held certain views. I know that Galileo was one of those men who stood up and said, 'you cannot hold to this, you cannot let it become dogma. It will be your downfall. I beg you. I love my church, please do not say a thing that may show you as fallible.'  This in itself might be presumptuous enough to get you dead, but that was not it. That is how it is told in the play of Bertolt Brecht and in the history we read and they do not mention that what Galileo said shatters whole cosmologies.

Galileo was not killed for his work but he was imprisoned, censored, and ultimately died in silence having renounced what he believed to be true. He is considered a martyr of science. He isn't, because he did not die for it. He renounced it and lived to work in secrecy. He is not a martyr and although I respect his practicality I am disgusted by his failure to hold to what he held to be true. We die. It cannot be helped. For goodness sakes die for something if you can!

For Aristotle and as such for most all of the medieval tradition there were two realms. There was a superlunary and the sublunary. The sublunary is earth. Earth is mutable, changing, subject to birth and decay. Earth is imperfection at the center of a perfect universe. Past the vapours of the earth is the moon, the first superlunary body. All superlunary bodies are perfect, never-changing, and divine. The thing of it is the Catholic church still had bits of paganism in it, the worst of them being Aristotle. All we need do is remember that these are people who still worshiped the stars. It is never mentioned. There is a bit of talk about the need for earth to be at the centre of God's plan, but it is never mentioned that these are people who looked at the stars as holy bodies. The Arabic philosophy, which bleeds into western thought, considers them manifestations of God. It was believed that beyond the earth moved the heavenly spheres. These perfect bodies moved on crystalline tracks and made music unheard by any human creature; it was sometimes said that the animals could hear the music, especially birds and nighttime things.

So Galileo's science destroyed one of the last holding places of pagan belief. It forced the acceptance of one more thing not infested with spirits, not alive, not meaningful. Of course they fought him! Of course they were angry!

Being studious

 1. Assiduous in study; devoted to the acquisition of learning.
Const. in, of.
    b. Of the nature of, pertaining to, or concerned with learning or study.
    c. Of a place: Devoted to or suited to study.

 2. Giving careful attention; intent on a purpose or object, heedful, solicitous.
    a. with agent-n.
    b. const. to with inf., of, for (rare), in.
    c. Characterized by or exhibiting careful attention.
    d. Planned with care; studied, deliberate.
-OED

I've always been hard on myself. I was rarely disciplined so I learned  to discipline myself. Having artistic desires I am well in tune with the impossibility of ever succeeding at perfection, and the failure to apply myself as I should.

This year I started joining study groups. I decided to go easier on myself. I would prepare for the study session. Go to the study session. Take what I could and review it, and be done. I practice lowering my standards to something manageable. I believe that if I set achievable tasks for myself I am likely to become a stronger and more studious person. It has not worked so far. So far I have simply managed to achieve less. My standard seems to be connected to how well I achieve. If I am aiming for perfect I will get 75%. If I am aiming for 80% I will get 70%. I should aim for 90%, then I might get 80%. It really does not work. I am supposed to be a philosophy honours student. I darn well know I'm bright enough, I just can't seem to work hard enough.

In Latin 101 I learned the word estudiar and loved it. This was a word loved by the Romans. It appears as studious around 1350. Studious women are to go to the convent where they may satisfy their love of knowledge. It never goes away. Part of the problem might be the religious connotation. I cannot find the original latin use, and as such I am for lack of a pagan understanding.

I lived with a highly religious girl for four months. She played the piano six hours a day, which was not enough. She worked at night as a nurse. She took classes at the university. Sometimes she even went for jogs with me! I know how she managed it. She has a God.

My beliefs do not work that way. I have always linked religion, writing, and study. I do, however, not have the support of the two thousand year Church behind me and that is a powerful thing to lack. Furthermore I cannot replace God with myself. I like myself well enough but there is no respect and certainly no love. If only I finished that novel, if only I worked a little harder, one more hour, one more reading, one step closer to finishing an essay, then it would be different.

My solution today was to go searching for the concept of studiousness. Maybe if I understood it I would become it. There are very few blogs that discuss studiousness, and even fewer websites. I was redirected to studio. I liked the Oxford English Dictionary 'devoted to the acquisition of learning.'

I am devoted to philosophy!

Philosophy is everything I want to do and be. If I have a soul I have given it to whatever god is the philosopher's God, and I consider giving away one's soul to be immoral so that ought to be a very impressive sort of devotion. My trouble is I am devoted like a dog. Philosophy is my master and I shall do as it says, but it says I must think for myself and that is not what I want. The other definition of studious is 'characterized by or exhibiting careful attention' and this is certainly not me.

People think that I am studious. The people close to me who see me making tea, and who go for walks with me, and see me fall asleep after 15 minutes of trying to read a book think that I am studious. I always assumed that that was the image I gave off, but really if studiousness is devotion to study I am devoted. Everything I do, no matter how flawed or misguided it is, is for the aim of becoming a better person and a better scholar. I am weak of will but I am as a dog, utterly loyal to a day-dreaming master. Half of my life I spend in justification and excuses for my failures at careful and deliberate study, but when I do apply myself and manage to understand something of the world those are my favourite moments.

But isn't that like the woman who tries to write a novel? She sits there staring at the page and cannot think of a thing to do. Is she a writer or just a fake? What about when she cleans the house? Makes dinner? Cleans the fish tank?

Yes, it is like this woman. This woman gets a phone call from her agent. He wants the next chapter. She disappears for two days and there is the next chapter. This is what I do. It is not a healthy way of doing things but there is progress. I am moving forward. I am learning more. Maybe this is a handicap I most accept. I want to be perfect. I never will be, but I want to be. I'm going to aim for somewhere beyond human conception and fail every single time.

The spirit and the inner editor

National novel writing month is over. Where is your inner editor?

My wordcount calendar advised me to kill mine and bury it in the greenhouse. I know that Chris Baty advises the somewhat less violent method of sending it on an all expenses paid cruise for the month of November

First I would like to note that my inner editor is not buried in the greenhouse. Why not? Well, when I write creatively (essays are another matter) my inner editor becomes quite friendly. Sometimes I worry it goes too easy on me; my inner editor gets very excited when I write. I feed it all the little bits of twisted up plotline, all the nasty plotholes, and all the unrealistic characters. It stalks around for a few hours, and then comes back with a fully digested version of my story. I've found that the happiest parts of my life are when I have that little voice talking in the back of my head, working out the problems, and finding solutions. I like being happy, so I decided to see how I could apply that to other parts of my life.

I find my inner editor is great when it has a story to work on, but whenever I try to study or write an essay things fall rather to pieces. What goes wrong? I'm sitting there with the voice in the back up my head saying, why didn't you get up earlier? You are procrastinating. You are so lazy. You will fail and then life will be pointless and why don't you just go off and kill yourself. That is abusive, and the sort of behaviour one finds in disturbed and unhealthy relationships. So why do I let this happen? Because I've always believed the darn thing. If I know I am messing up maybe I will get better. Maybe, but no. It does not work that way.

Henceforth I have a project. I want my inner editor to behave the same in all areas of my life. I want it to be that little voice in my head workings things out. So my project is to turn it away from my personal failings, and toward what I love. I love writing and philosophy and living properly. The last being a big issue for someone who has only lived on her own for a year and a half. So instead of it telling me how much my essay sucks I want it to be preocupied with the ideas I am working with. Instead of being cross that I am not studying I want it to be thinking about Plato's conception of the spirit and how that applies to his metaphyics. Much more useful and I am keeping myself interested in the task at hand instead of thinking about myself all the time. The best way to improve any skill is to put it to use. Seems like it should work, right?

Yes, it should. But I gave it a funny purpose. I now understand Plato's conception of the spirit. Plato says the spirit should look upwards towards what is unchanging instead down towards the material. I've always thought that to be rather silly, slightly disturbed anti-materialism. But that's what I am trying to do with my inner editor! That's the way I am happiest. My inner editor is my spirit! So I believe in spirits. What interesting things I learn when I don't focus on getting up in the morning and sitting down to do my readings at exactly half past eight.

Watch for my next post, where I will discuss the difference between the Christian and the Socratic Spirit and show why the latter fits my definition and not the former.

How words die

I took a course last year on the history of western thought. My professors told me many things that stuck in my mind. One was that evil is dead, according to both Nietzsche and Derrida, and the other is that we live in an age of profound skepticism.

At the time I was surprised. I wondered what the average person would say if they were told that we are profoundly skeptical. I’m still quite sure they haven’t noticed.

As a writer I am rather disturbed by the death of words. It is like finding the grave of a friend you never knew was dead.

Take morality. The Greeks, particularly the sophists, began to doubt the existence of morality. Those who lost the reality of it sought to convince others of it. It died for some that that death was spread to others until all were infected by it, then it was cut away to allow for new growth.

The trouble is that morality can die for some without dying for others. Why should reality be destroyed completely just because in one man it is dead? Why should reason be killed completely just because it is dead for me. Is it even dead for me? Yes. If I can question it it is dead. I said that dissecting an idea kills it, but it seems that the ideas are already dead when they are dissected.

Unless...unless we are like Aristotle, digging up the bulbs to look at them because they die every spring. Maybe reason will return when it is warmer and we are closer to the sun. Not for me, but for others. We are rational and we are a-rational. I must accept that I am part of the latter.

Art and my doomedness

I have long been aware (I have only pursued writing for seven years, may I say long ow?) that fantasy is not a serious thing, that romanticism is a silly and trivial pursuit and that no honest and hardworking individual will partake in such things. I find this a troublesome and belittling idea but sadly any attempt to break free of it materialises in a verbal attack on some other form.

My original solution to this problem was to declare that what I did was not art. I did not know what it was, but concluded that it existed (like myself) solely to make people who encountered it happy. The trouble is that existing solely to amuse others is a rather draining activity, and being the caring creator that I am I did not particularly wish it upon what I created. After a thought I did not wish it on myself either. But that is not the problem, the problem is far simplier, it is that in rebelling against the idea of the artist. I tend to characterize artists in a rather unfair light, as a reactionaries and who desires more to make some important and relevant point then to tell a story. The trouble is in claiming not to be an artist I AM reactionary.

The second trouble I have with the idea of fantasy as silly and irreverant it that the recommended opposite is in itself an idea. The honest and hardworking artist may exist, but they are partaking in that ideal. Is it so strange to write in a manner which allows us to give those ideas flesh and form in every way we can?

Fantasy is genre

Another world is not a box, some strange land under and alien sky is not a box. It is a land, and it is strange, and it is vast and sweeping and irredeemable. And I am doomed.

I do not want to learn how to write fantasy. That was not my plan. I wrote, and it was fantasy. Maybe all those books I read influenced the choice, or maybe it is the natural way for one like me. That is what I thought at least. It is still true, but what the hell is fantasy? A little niche drilled into the wall, a premise already given at the beginning so you are stuck there and you cannot escape ever.

I love it, I love it dearly and I cannot imagine how a thing could really matter to me if it were not fantasy. It is such an honest sort of writing, everything is there and tangible. It is such an earnest sort of writing, there is no sophistry or judgement, only the keen desire to lead the reader off into some unknown place. That does not seem so bad.

But we use a set of tools and symbols to create and the ones I hold are of more then character and plot. I have such a variety of clothes and mechanisms, little things that flavour fantasy. How can I cast off these clothes? I thought I had, I thought I had done away with it. I thought I had the tools and symbols at my command, I thought I could do what I liked. I don't like this.

Villains and personality

Villains should have personality. This is what they tell us. Do not forget to make them realistic or to give them reason and motivation, elsewise, they will not be a real person.

What? Real people? I write fantasy! Mine should not be real, mine should be pretty little bits of paper with things like greed and courage written on them. I'll use red for one and green for the other and white in case I need some purity. If I make my characters realistic then how am I writing a fantasy? Guess I'm not. My goal is to create characters that are wonderful, vibrant, and tangible, henceforth, my villains must also be real. I guess I lose the fantasy there. (I can always make up for it elsewhere.)

Why must they be real? Because that is the underlying structure of it. (I've seen this before, but never in a way that made it click. Maybe I can manage.) There is a way of looking at things called magical thinking. Magical thinking is especially suited for fairytales and by that right we may, with only mild damage, apply it to all fantasy.

Fantasy is very physical. The character is sad; it rains. The character is angry; the world falls into chaos. The character is torn; a villain appears for them to fight. This is all well and good, but it means that the entire story must be taken. The reader will fall in love with the story instead of the characters. This is acceptable.

The problem occurs when writing a longer piece. We wish our characters to face others, but we also wish them to face themselves. How can they do both? The others represent them and henceforth cannot do anything but be a part of the hero. Henceforth we must allow the hero to internalize his inner conflict and face an enemy who is not a reflection of themselves but instead a complete and self-sustaining entity.

This is not to say that the villain cannot at times act as a piece of the hero, or the hero a piece of the villain, just that when the characters are maintaining vibrant and tangible personalities they will be separate. If you do not desire an external foe, and your character is complex and interesting enough that you wish to work through them for the plotline, then the villain need no more then a cloak and the worst traits of the hero.

Spiders are bugs

In fifth grade grade I confused my teachers with my large vocabulary. Sadly my open-mindedness is not equal. I hate to be wrong. I have less arguments now, but that is because I know more; I have more information and more skill in presentation.

At the Rock and Gem show I saw a trilobite and said 'cute bug'. The seller was offended and explained that this wasn't a bug, it was a trilobite. I felt incredibly stupid. Bugs have always stumped me. Spiders are not bugs, those weird sea creatures are not bugs, worms are not bugs. I was never much of a bug-enthusiast, so to me it was just a misunderstanding of definition.

And it was. I encountered the bug obsession again today. I looked it up. A bug is an insect or insect-like creature. To me a spider is insect-like, and so is a trilobite, (manner of locomotion, tendency to segmentation, etc.) So hah! Spiders are bugs, disagreement is simply a matter of definition, not scientific truth of leg numbers and segmentations. Pardon my vindictiveness, I don't like being wrong.

Art is necessary

OR why you should buy a piano and take up finger painting.

It is a common habit for me, if I accomplish anything to show any poor unsuspecting creature who crosses my path. A bit childish I suppose, but no brave hero has risen to stop me, so I think I'm safe.

Once I submitted a portion of my work to a critique group. It was awful. The group was wonderful. They told me their impression of my main character, some confusions, pointed out that I had the same narrator as my characters voice, and other good things. It was quite useful and in the end did the piece a lot of good, but I felt ashamed. I thought of other times I had done the same, poems that were absolutely terrible, stories that made me cringe. I didn't want people to see those, and I knew I would show them. I had to stop, and I would.

After twenty minutes of valient resolve I realised how dull my life would be without writing. I have other goals, I don't intend to be a writer, but it is everything else besides. Writing influences how I function, how I see the world and make use of it. Life without writing is like poetry without rhyme and rhythm, possible but lacking.

Some of the medieval history department function on the theory that everyone in the middle ages (322 to 1481 according to my brilliant essay on the topic) was drunk. That might have helped things, but I refuse to say it fixed all their problems – I am morally against drinking, I have to say that. Most people in time have believed in the existence of chairs and most people in time haven't had mental breakdowns with quite the frequency of the modern age (appeal to population, fallacy). They had tradition and faith, they used these tools to understand adverse circumstances. We live in an age of science, we know the chair is in our head, we do not have that liberty.

I don't know how people function without the arts, and I don't believe they do. It is dangerous to prescribe art as a tool, like religion or tradition, but I prescribe it as a salve. Start now, you are less likely to fall apart that way. So long as you don't take the 'artiste' route that is. And finger painting really is a lot of fun, though quite silly.

Editing is very, very scary

Last year I finished NaNoWriMo and said “I am never doing that again. It is not possible to write a novel in a month.” For all my meticulous outlining and my 70,000 words I didn't feel like I had something I loved.

But I am not a creature of logic; I did it again. This year my goal was to write something that I loved enough to carry through the editing process. NaNoWriMo is a fair goal depending on what you want from it. I find the parts of my brain that create just work faster under a deadline. I daydream half the time anyway, it just isn't as focused.

And I am terrified. I see my novel looming before me, full of spelling errors and misplaced characters, full of subplots that vanish and ideas that never have use.

I read a bit and thought it was okay. I worked through a chapter summary to figure out what story I was telling and found something completely different. Now I'm stuck, just like last year, with the novel I wrote and the one I wish I wrote and I don't even know which is better. I know there are huge portions that need writing, but I don't know what they are or where they are which means I'm going to be writing and editing at the same time.

But this is all silliness. I have no reason to be frightened because I have nothing to lose. Well, actually I do. I have my deadline set out and people agreeing to read my novel when it is presentable in June. If I make a major mistake and let it remain I will feel moral guilt for destroying my art and my characters will never forgive me.

I really have no choice in the matter, I must be afraid and I must do it right.

Combating scene-based clichés

I'm sure many fantasy writers have experienced this: you are happily writing along, discussing the coming of the evil overlord when -- bam! -- you realise that what you are writing is horribly, terribly, disfigured and clichéd. This can be a depressing moment, and honestly it is not one I can help you with. You might not have outlined, but if your overlord bothers is preventing progress then you ought either to stop right now and do so, or at least try it next time you are trying to defeat an evil overlord. On the other hand if you try to rationalise one of these plots you can sometimes end up killing it.

Sometimes it is better to accept your evil overlords and love them for who they are, even if they don't really make sense. Fantasy can be problematic in that way. I hate quest stories from a writers point of view: they are full of wholes, ignore historical premises, and don't make proper sense. As a reader I love them.

So, back to what we can deal with. Scene based clichés. You know that scene where your characters go down into the dank, dark, dubious caverns to hunt some unforgettable forgotten evil or travel to some improperly named 'other side of the mountains' where the populace conjugate their nouns and all the grown ups wear sheets. Or maybe just the caverns.

When you realise you are writing a cliché here is what you do: Stop; Give yourself half a moment and let what you are writing register. And ask a questions or two, get to know this scene.

1.Why do I want to write about this?
Maybe you just love the princess who finally gets hit over the head with reality. Or maybe you don't want to write it but feel obligated.

2.What does it have to do with the rest of the novel?
Maybe it makes perfect sense for the princess to enter reality right now, and the sarcastic hero needed to tell her that she was an idiot to make it happen.

Once you understand the scene and why you are writing it you can probably do better then to simply repeat what has been done before. Though there is much to be said on the impossibility of originality it can be said that your novel is unique. It may follow the same storyline as another and have similar characters to this one, and discuss a land that reminds you of this other one, but unless you are writing fanfiction you are in your own world. Make the most of it, and make sure everything fits into that world and has that particular flavour that only this one novel can give it.

Actually, this advice stands for any scene. It never hurts to know why a thing is happening and what it has to do with anything, it is just urgent to deal with when you are getting writers-block from it.

Tropes: genreness

Trope: A significant or recurrent theme; a motif.
Cliché: A stereotyped expression, a commonplace phrase; also, a stereotyped character, style, etc.

So says the OED.

From this we see that well a cliche is a bad and evil sort of thing a trope is good. The tropes in 'a cure for magic' apparently include government, productivity, and elves. Or were those themes? Elves aren't a theme, so I don't think so.

From this I can also say that trope is not exactly the word I am looking for. What I mean is that particular thing which keeps a genre together, the genreness. This Genreness acts as as glue to keep ideas, characters, plot lines, and magic all working together.

Sometimes people forget this; sometimes the genreness takes over. If it takes over you end up with something along the lines of genre-trash, but less interesting. A story is good because if the characters, and if the characters are subsumed by their roles as hero and villain you lose character. Next the plot line will be taken over by little hero-quest goblins that tell you to follow formats. The problem being that genreness isn't plot line, and you end up with weird series of not really connecting events.

But it goes the same way if you deny your genre completely. I'm happy for those who want to be new and original and I hope that they succeed, but they have no write to complain if they do not. I don't read fantasy for the new and original. I read it because it is fantasy. If I wanted something else I would read something else. But that isn't to say that I don't like clever and interesting stories, I just don't like people saying they write fantasy when they are really writing speculative fiction. I like a story that is individual and powerful, that stands out from everything else because it is just that good, not because you've written your fantasy without elves, heroes, magic, feudal institutions, or at the very least some disconnection from reality.

So there are different levels to the amount of genreness a novel contains. Dragonlance has a lot more then the Hobbit, but both are in the realm of the fantastic.

Finishing nanowrimo

Because I heart typewriter I am to announce that I have completed my second novel, or rather that I have completed my second nano novel. Apparently that doesn't really count, even if it is novelish in form and content.

Now, I should know better then to discuss my writing with my friends, family, and random people on the bus, but I don't. I'm just not the sort of person who can write a novel in a month and then keep quiet about it. I don't mean to brag, it is just the thing on my mind...like when some dull bloke wins some sports with the hitting and the yelling and the green fake grass and you are just so excited that you tell me, even though I hate sports. Now it shouldn't be like that, because (1) I have never actually MET someone who hates novels and (2) if YOU won some dull sports thingy I would be interested; I would be happy for you, and I would make you explain exactly how awesome you were, because no matter if I like people watching sports or not and accomplishment is exactly that and should be appreciated.

But no. My sister seems to think that I didn't actually have a plot, which might be true no more then it is true for many stories...and I'm pretty sure that that thing I was writing about was a plot anyway, just not the normal sort of fantasy plot. I mean, of course it is going to be difficult when all I can think of is hero-quest and all I can write is the opposite. Seriously, it has happened twice now: both my novel began conceptually as heroic journeys, which I then proceeded to pick apart until they made some kind of sense, a kind of sense that may or may not destroy their forward motion.

More interesting is the fact that apparently what I am doing cannot possibly be art because I enjoyed doing it. Now, it is quite true that love writing but even I am not quite so crazy as to write a novel in one month and enjoy every second of it. I HAVE to love this, I don't really have a choice in the matter. If I didn't I would be miserable, but still writing. For me this is a prolonged obsessive streak, twice I've seen it at the beginning of October and I haven't had a choice in the matter after that. On the other hand there is truth in the matter, a weird sort of truth that is difficult for me to deal with because it is linked to all sorts of conclusions I have come to to protect myself from my writing and my writing from ever being published. I am not an artist when I write. There are two halves to this, the first being that I am forbidden until I am 30, because I believe strongly that though much of what is written isn't published much of what is published is trash. I refuse to allow that sort of thing into the world, I refuse to let myself take pride in something that is not worthy of pride. The other half is that I want to write things that people will enjoy. Like many fantasy novelists I take after Tolkien, though my approach may be a little different then most. He said that society traps people, and it is our job as fantasy writers to help as many people escape as possible. I don't want to write some brilliant timeless epic full of symbols that will last for centuries, which scholars will puzzle over and concoct absurd meanings for. I hate aspirations to brilliancy, I cannot imagine someone sitting down and thinking 'oh gosh am I gonna be meaningful today', and if they do I cannot imagine how they can produce something worth looking at, but neither do I want to write some trash novel that people will forget five minutes after its gone. This leaves me in the inconvenient situation where I cannot aspire to brilliancy without betraying myself but neither can I be less then brilliant in order to please my sense of what is right and good. I am sure, however, that there are people who manage this. I've seen them, and I hope they don't mind me taking them as my role-models, but again it seems as if I am reaching too high, being too presumptuous. I hope I'll have this figured out in eleven years.

The strangest response was the person who suggested I print it and hide it in a drawer, to be discovered for future generations. That just scared me. I think I might do a bit of editing instead.