Young Writers Society

OH BOY.

This book has a redemption arc, and I just. ARGH. Like, about halfway through, I kind of started freaking out because OMG what if there are some sins that just can't be forgiven? What if redemption is not possible? What if some people are just doomed???

Like... I won't completely spoil my story, despite this whole thing being a spoiler, but like... to use Star Wars as an example... yes, Darth Vader might save Luke Skywalker, but does that one act of a father redeeming his son really redeem all the horrendous acts that he did previously? Like, he blew up a friggin' PLANET. That is large scale mass destruction of innocent people, just because he was interrogating someone. Can he REALLY be completely forgiven because of this one unselfish act after years of causing pain and suffering at such a massive scale?

And these thoughts occurred to me throughout the book, because halfway through, you begin to hope for redemption for this character. Except, also... what if there is no hope? And like... I wasn't prepared for how... dark it got and how conflicted my emotions were about the whole thing. Even now, I feel slightly torn. Like, is it worth saving the unsavable?

Which brings up even more crazy feelings. Like, just the mere fact that I am writing this story... should I write it? Because like, am I defending the unforgivable by writing this story? Because if redemption is not actually possible, then that means that those who are guilty of unforgivable sin should be destroyed and their destruction should be rejoiced in. Nor should we look upon their character sympathetically because to look at them in a sympathetic manner is to be complicit in evil, in a sense.

So... um... basically, writing this story is causing me to have a spiritual crisis. Geep. I know. Pretty crazy, right? >.>

Mind you, even though I am agonizing over this, I fully admit that this story is probably not as deep as I make it seem. Like, right now in the story, my MC is pretending to be a wedding coordinator and is dealing with several children who lost a lizard, and honestly it's pretty goofy. You would probably read this story and wonder, "Lol, this story seriously is giving Snoink a spiritual crisis?" So like, this is probably just me being personally angsty. But STILL. I feel strongly about this story, lol.

Anyway. I wrote a lot of words today. I feel slightly better about this story. I am still not quite sure whether this story is worth being told, but I've come to terms that, even if it's not worth being told, it is worth being written. So at least there's that...

I remember when I was a girl, the Traveling Wall Memorial came to a local park nearby, so my mom took us there to look at the wall. It was a wall with names of those who had been lost in the Vietnam War. And as she tries to explain this, she starts to cry. Like, ugly crying. I can hear her talking about the draft and her classmates and those who didn't make it home, but all of it was fragmented because she was crying so hard. So even though she was trying to explain what happened, all of it was disjointed and strange. And watching my mother, who is normally one of the most restrained and calm people I know, openly weeping like that was just... stunning.

Anyway, we read the names on the Memorial and went home, but my main impression of the whole event was that the Vietnam War was terrible because it made my mother cry.

Anyway. I grew up some. Then I became a teenager. My Grandma Rose came to visit for the summer, but she left on September 10, 2001. We went all the way through the terminal and waved at her while her airplane flew away. Life was good. And then... the very next day... September 11 happened.

And that was a terrible, terrible day. We watched the news over and over again until we could bear it no longer. My mom made corn muffins for us in a daze as a treat. To this day, corn muffins reminds me of September 11. It was awful and traumatizing in a way that I can't fully explain. It shook the nation in a way that is hard to understand. It was awful. I can't explain it. To this day, I try to avoid watching news footage or reading news footage of that day because I cannot do that without crying my eyes out. It's awful.

Anyway, a couple of years ago, I went to a local park with my kids and realized that they had a 9/11 memorial with some of the wreckage from the buildings. So I tried to explain to them what happened and why it was so important and why there was a bunch of twisted metal in the middle of a park with American flags surrounding it... and then I started weeping. And I don't think I was able to teach them anything important... everything they learned was so disjointed and strange because I just. couldn't. stop. crying.

But they knew that something important happened.

Anyway, yesterday was September 11 again. Usually, I try to avoid the news that day. But yesterday, they came home with questions and told us what they had learned from history and it was a bit of a shock because September 11 is now only history. There's probably only a couple of you who remember that day with any clarity, if at all. Some of you were probably not even born on that day. And so it probably would seem crazy if you saw some middle-aged woman (aka, me) weeping over it.

But it was a terrible day.

So, if you're wondering... the real Adelore was my grandma's uncle. Yes, that was his name. Anyway, my grandma called her Uncle Adelore by Uncle Shorty when she was growing up, since basically everyone knew him as Shorty and not by his real name when he was younger, before he took orders. Later, when he took orders, he chose the name "Maurice." But also, nobody knew him by that name either, lol. He was always Mo after that. So like... I knew and called him Brother Mo. I remember once he played Santa at my great-grandma's Christmas Eve party and I was so confused because he was tan, short, clean-shaven, and very bald, haha.

Now that I write this out, it occurs to me that it would be epic if my character Adelore were known by a nickname from the mines... like, Clarise would call him Adelore ~of course~ because that is a highly respectable name, but it would be amusing if he were known as something else outside of that. But my character isn't very short and his name would probably be something dumb, like Troofy or something, just because of how irritating his gift can be.

So... maybe not, lol.