Three Dollar Quill

I started laying the groundwork for winline rendering in tic-tac-toe. This basically involved making a whole bunch of global constants and variables, the former to make some logic I haven't written yet easier, the latter because it makes things easier in terms of communication between methods. That will require a global variable one way or another, but maybe I can look into making it cleaner when I have this actually all the way to what I want, in terms of behavior, and I can iterate on it.

I'm also looking over the giant pile of books I have on my Kindle, and a subsection of my Amazon wish list, and thinking about what I want to read, in which order. I ended up grabbing anything that looked plausible for my "reading list" collection, because I figured it was easier to notice something that's there and shouldn't be, than that's not there and should be. Some of the stuff in there is probably more on the side of "potentially interesting" than "useful for what I have in mind". I'm reading one thing that seems analogically applicable, ZERO to MAKER by David Lang. My various creative plans don't involve soldering or waterproofing, so far as I know, but I think this book will establish a useful cognitive toolbox in terms of accomplishing what I want to accomplish.

My plan for the rest of the books is to figure out which projects I want to plan for, and where any given book would fit in terms of "if I want to make progress on one of these right now, what knowledge do I need?"

The projects I want to do are:

• The Romance Instrumentality Project. First priority is reading some romance novels and figuring out which ones I like, and which ones to reread later for analysis. Next, reading about outlining, with an eye towards making a model of beat sheets. Once I've done that, I'm going to want to focus on the specific subject matter I'm going for, which is going to mean switching gears a lot and reading about various theories and their applications.
• The OMICE short stories. I feel like before I get OMICE into it, I want to find some other thing to write short stories for, hopefully light-weight in terms of world-building or the urge to world-build.
• Linked Seas. There are still some serious issues I have with characterization, so I'm not sure which angle I want to take with this project.

The first bullet point started off shorter, but I came to realize that it was the best starting point, in terms of things I have a concrete project in mind for. So that means that I'll first be purchasing stuff from that list I put together earlier (and also checking for new stuff), and then reading it, and then posting my reactions I suppose.

By a process of rational evaluation, I have determined that the most fruitful course of action for me is to engage with work that focuses on the interiority of individuals, often relatably flawed ones, and be emotionally honest in my reactions. This is the kind of thing I made Three Dollar Quill for in the first place. Also, I am terrified.

I like to think that I've built up an aura of detached coolness and disaffection. I'm pretty sure I actually haven't, but I like to think that, and I need to stop.

I can stew in this some more, but I need to:

• Get to bed, wake up, go to work, come back, then:
• Find which book I want to read first.
• Read it.

Better get started, hurry up and sleep.