“Much mighty speech-making there has been, both in and out of Parliament, concerning Tom [^1], and much wrathful disputation how Tom shall be got right. Whether he shall be put into the main road by constables, or by beadles, or by bell-ringing, or by force of figures, or by correct principles of taste, or by high church, or by low church, or by no church: whether he shall be set to splitting trusses of polemical straws with the crooked knife of his mind, or whether he shall be put to stonebreaking instead. In the midst of which dust and noise, there is but one thing perfectly clear, to wit, that Tom only may and can, or shall and will, be reclaimed according to somebody's theory but nobody's practice. And in the hopeful meantime, Tom goes to perdition head foremost in his old determined spirit.”

— From Bleak House, Chapter 46, by Charles Dickens, emphasis mine

Well, don't try that^ at home kids. In other news. I have been in something of a slump in my writing. I did finish the second draft of book two over the summer, but it has been hard to conjure the passion. I think part of it is due to querying. Facing so much rejection, and viewing my book as a product, makes it hard to write something fresh because when I look it over my first thought is how weird and unmarketable it is. Writing itself takes an entirely different skill-set; the joy of a creative sentence is a humble joy compared to the shiny potential of publishing; I am continually astonished how different the world of letters is from the world that sells them. Without publishing, however, one can't live on sentences alone, but my heart certainly lives for them. “I can't go on. I'll go on.” [^2]