For my final project, I chose to write a short story. Of course, I began to regret this not long after making my decision, since I am never satisfied with writing and often find myself carried away. I get wrapped up in nitpicking and minuscule edits, which is of course why I am turning in the project now, instead of a night or two nights ago.

I am not a fan of pedagogical writing; I believe that writing has to stand, first, as writing and not teaching. Flannery O'Connor has some brilliant things to say about this and I heartily recommend anyone who wants to learn anything about writing, fiction, or literature read everything she's ever written, because she makes the point much more clearly than I can make it. With that in mind, I spent a lot of time just sitting around thinking about the things we looked at this semester. Some of what I thought about was the concepts we discussed, but mostly I considered the creative work we looked at. I thought about the questions these raised and the directions they took. Eventually I came up with a story, although it is not much like my usual writing.

My hope is that the story itself functions as an answer to the summation questions of our course; I wouldn't be comfortable rummaging inside it and pointing things out myself. Writing needs to speak for itself, and my hope is that this story speaks as I want it to.

I also took the opportunity to make this something of an homage, and there are references to many texts and authors I found inspiring and intelligent on this subject: Jorge Luis Borges (he was the main inspiration and you can find references to his works peppered liberally throughout the story), Julio Cortazar, Mark Z Danielewski, Kurt Vonnegut, Don DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy. Not all of these people (I just realized they're all men... I wonder what that means) wrote about explicit alternate reality or virtual reality scenarios, but I find they are all in some way relevant to what I was writing. Another inspiration--probably an embarrassing one--is the "Myst" series of games. The atmosphere of those games always chilled me, but what was most relevant to what I was writing was the creation and use of books. At any rate, the story should function on its own without the knowledge of these references, but I hope that they enrich it.

Although, to be honest, many of those references (with the exception of Borges) are probably only visible to me, because I'm always a little nervous about making them too obvious.

(And no, there's no homage to "Lawnmower Man," as sterling a piece of cinema as it is.)