And the lights are not fluorescent, and there are no words on the page.

Author's Preface

I am a deliberate person.

I am also a writer before I am a person. Therefore, it stands to reason that I am a deliberate writer before any and all else. Before the urge to bend and snap and smush any piece of prose I've crafted straight after the 24-hour mark, before the fear of losing the original magic of the first or second, or even eleventh draft. Before the anxious, unshakable anticipation of letting a piece be, of leaving it to stew in unremarkable and precisely nauseating amateurity. The kind that gets a "Oh, it's greaaaat!" at the family reunion and a toss in every publisher's discard bin.

That is why, if you are to look back at my original rough drafts and the revisions offered to you below, you will find my edits obvious, particular, and, to a degree, self-explanatory. In my evaluation and reevaluation (and re-reevaluation) of these individual pieces, I have established the weakest spots of their prose to require, by and large, a slight fine tuning of creative/narrative voice, and, above all else, a reframing and recontextualizing of these essays and what they are (along with what I am) attempting to say. In doing so, I hope, and almost believe, that I have reinvisioned (thus, giving myself room to reinvent) the way each essay approaches its intended reader, and in turn, the silent avenues in which the reader is allowed, and encouraged, to approach it.