Microfireflies

I first noticed microfireflies on June 10, 2016, in Washington Square Park. I ended up writing about them in Leave Society, and they're depicted on the cover, though in real life they seem to be colorless or white. Below are all the mentions of them in my book. These passages are in third-person, about a character named Li, but they were written as nonfiction, based on my experiences.

cover by Linda Huang

From page 144:

Supine in Washington Square Park one day, Li saw flitting, ephemeral, glowing dots that seemed not in the air, the sky, his mind, or his eyes. They weren’t the wormy question-mark shapes he suspected were microbes, or the tadpole-like shadows, drifting past in tugs of movement belying their inter-eyeball nearness; the semi-translucent dots seemed to be in every area of empty space but were only visible against sky. They appeared, squiggled rapidly, and vanished, like densely packed fireflies in fast-forward.

Li could see two to four microfireflies, as he termed them, into their world, as if looking into murky water. He saw them focusing five feet above himself, on a cloud, and on nothing. Blowing air at them and waving his hand through them didn’t seem to affect them. He searched “glowing dots in air” and other phrases online but found nothing. He observed them daily in the park. 

Maybe microfireflies were the other-dimensional flickerings of a personal, specieal, or global emergent property. Had humans achieved a sufficient density of interconnection for an overmind to emerge? Individual minds couldn’t exist in the imagination except vaguely and fleetingly, as visitors or observers, but maybe eight billion minds on one planet couldn’t not be volitional and participatory there. 

Maybe an infant overmind, made of minds as animals were made of cells, was self-preservationally downloading partnership ideas into society, in part by sprinkling them over urban parks. 

Page 150:

He fell asleep [supine in Washington Square Park], became a moxic red energy, rising and fast. When he woke, he kept his lids down and saw dark microfireflies, pinpricks of shadow that seemed slower and sparser than when backdropped by sky.

Page 161:

As he walked to a bodega for mineral water, falling snow reminded him of microfireflies. 

Supine in the park the next day, he couldn’t see them at first. After he blurred his vision a little and stopped thinking, translucent, vibrating, meshed hexagons appeared and changed into a teeming layer of curlicuing, light-trailing specks. 

Maybe microfireflies would coalesce into a holographic overlay cognizable into 3D meaning. Already immersed in layered visuals, people would integrate visual language quickly. It could be a transitional ability, something to practice on Earth and take into the imagination.

Page 179:

He walked away and stood in place [on Carp Mountain in Taiwan], flapping for five minutes. He couldn’t see microfireflies, or they weren’t there. The sky seemed empty, lucid, uncharged. 

Maybe the swarming dots of light were an urban phenomenon. One cubic centimeter of urban air contained probably hundreds to millions of molecules of glyphosate, Earth’s most used pesticide, because gasoline, as per the 1990 Clean Air Act, was partly made from glyphosate-filled corn or sugarcane, Li had read. Maybe microfireflies were pesticides, flashing as they got buffeted and interpenetrated by municipal intensities of synthetic electromagnetic radiation—electrosmog—or maybe the overmind was helpfully disassembling toxins into atoms and light.

Page 185:

He lay staring out the window [in his parents' apartment in Taipei], past an elevated train track, at the placid sky, seeing no microfireflies. The clouds seemed feeling-shaped, amorphously morphing.

Page 238:

In late April [2017], after finishing the third, 4.5 percent pruned draft of his book, Li remembered microfireflies. In Washington Square Park, he saw the tiny, lumine orbs, which hadn’t been in Taiwan. Maybe the new property would start in the States, where consciousness had been moiled by decades of larger witting and unwitting doses and mixtures of pesticides, psychedelics, and pharmaceuticals than in any other country. 

Page 295:

Lying on his back [in a park in Taipei], he read a printed draft of Rainbow’s poetry book, which she’d retitled But Did U Die? He underlined “Would u rather be crucified or waterboarded.” He underlined “When I die I will become everything,” put down the paper, and saw microfireflies in Taiwan for the first time. They seemed denser, quicker, and more transient than in New York. 

Maybe the abrupt relocation of metal from the crust to the sky as cities, electronics, militaries, and satellites was visiblizing cosmic rays. Maybe one day the new electromagnetic configuration would chain-reactively destroy everything from the ground to the ionosphere—an instantaneous reset to microbes, plants, insects, subterranean animals, and fish.

Page 342:

[Lying on a beach with Kay in Oahu,] Li saw microfireflies, which he hadn’t thought of yet in Hawaii, and which he hadn’t told anyone about. He described them to Kay, calling them “like tiny tadpoles.” She saw black threads, gray spots, and squiggly shapes that seemed to be in her eyes. Li said he saw those too—question-mark worms and other things—but the dots, which he’d first seen in Washington Square Park in the second half of the Year of Pain, when wonder had flowed as pain ebbed, didn’t seem to be in his eyes. 

Kay saw them. Li said maybe no one could see them unless someone else described them. Kay said Li had seen them. They discussed starting a religion around them. Li would write instructions on how to see them. He’d write what had happened minutes earlier. Gazing at the ocean horizon, he saw the lucent dots for the first time as a static, screen-covering “twinkling,” as Kay was describing them. 

Li said the dots might be the first noticeable evidence of a new emergent property. Maybe the whole solar system, starting with subatomic particles, was immaterializing and would soon vanish in a halved twinkle, then reappear elsewhere and casually perish, like most gametes, or survive to reach millions of dimensions. 

Leaving the beach, Li asked Kay what she’d name the dots. She said “dustwinkling” or “microstars.” Li said he’d called them microfireflies in his notes but liked her names more. “Microstars” reminded him that stars could seem and be minuscule from higher dimensions. “Dustwinkling” sounded calm and friendly.

Out of the 20-40 people I know who've read my book and said things about it to me, only three, I think, have mentioned microfireflies. Sam Pink said he'd seen them since he was a kid, and had only met one other person, in high school, who'd seen them. Tommy Orange and Deb Olin Unferth, during our events, both mentioned them, but didn't say if they'd seen them. I asked Deb if she'd seen them, and she seemed to not have tried. Later, in an email, she said, "I think I saw a microfirefly today. Just one."

Besides my girlfriend, whom the character Kay is based on, and besides Deb, I've only directly asked one other person, I think, about microfireflies. I asked my mom, and she said she'd try to see them, then said, "I have read page 145 for microfireflies many times and go look out of the window to the sky, but all I see is building, is it easier to see in the park or outside with trees and must be very concentrated?"

Three reviews have mentioned them. A Goodreads review said, "I felt happy reading about microfireflies, too, since I think I've seen them as a child, but I've never had any words to describe them, and they've always felt too weird or I've always been too forgetful (since I haven't seen them since I was a childhood) to ever try to write down what they're like." 

Christine Smallwood's review said, "He theorizes that the tiny dots he sees in his field of vision might be proof of an alien overmind settling on Earth." Dean Kissick wrote that he'd tried a "couple times" to see microfireflies, but hadn't seen them, but that one night he saw "a tingling around the leaves on the branches" outside his window. He wrote, "I suspect Lin’s probably just seeing fireflies because of his regular weed and acid consumption, or his long tail of other psychedelic experiences, or the many esoteric practices he details in the book." (An update.)

In a DM on Twitter, someone told me, “I first noticed the microfireflies about 20 years ago. I assume that what we're seeing is the blood flowing in our eyes.” Not counting myself, I see one mention of each when I searching Twitter for microfireflies and dustwinkling. Scott Burton, who interviewed me, said in an email, "I think I also see microfireflies."

A funny thing about microfireflies/dustwinkling is that people who see them can't prove to other people that they see them, and if someone lies that they see them, no one can prove that they're lying. People who don't see them might assume that people who do see them are lying. 

My girlfriend Yuka and I have discussed them for years, and we aren't sure what they are. Have you seen them? What do you think they are? I encourage people to share in the comments section. Thank you for participating in this.

Update: They seem to be "the blue field entoptic phenomenon," caused by the motion of white blood cells in capillaries in front of the retina. Red blood cells—erythrocytes—build up behind white blood cells—leukocytes—because leukocytes (which are larger and rarer than erythrocytes) stretch and slow down when they enter capillaries. The backed-up erythrocytes absorb blue light from the sky or other blue backgrounds, while more light gets through in the space ahead of the leukocytes (where there's a lack of erythrocytes) and also through the leukocytes, so that one sees bright, motioned dots. It's explained more in this paper, which calls leukocytes "water-clear blood cells," this video, and this video.

Backed-up red blood cells block blue light

Seems amazing that we can see the motion of something as tiny as a leukocyte (~1/10th the width of a human hair), and that we can easily discern our leukocyte count, as explained in the first video I linked. 

leukocyte levels (1954 study by Ursula Schmidt-Gross)

I wonder what people throughout history—from before leukocytes were known—have theorized about this phenomenon. I'm open to the possibility that the above isn't the full explanation.

Update 2: Discussed this in a podcast.

Update 3 (October 31): Noticed that when I breathe in and hold my breath, the microfireflies slow down and then mostly disappear. 

Update 4 (December 13): A flaw of the capillary theory seems to be that I see the microfireflies even in the center of my vision. There's no empty area in the center—where there are no capillaries—as would be expected.

"Nothing is as it appears to be. This is not glib."

Leave Society's epigraph—"Nothing is as it appears to be. This is not glib."—is by Kathleen Harrison, whom I wrote about visiting in Trip. 

It's my first epigraph. It was easy to choose. I didn't consider any other quotes. 

I considered using just "Nothing is as it appears to be" but decided, after consideration, to include "This is not glib" because it seems true and because I feel like some-to-many people will think or feel something like "That seems glib" after reading "Nothing is as it appears to be." Glib means "showing little forethought or preparation" and "lacking depth and substance." 

I like how "This is not glib" allows the epigraph to engage with the reader and to comment on itself. "This is not glib" can also refer to itself—it is not glib to say "This is not glib" about "Nothing is as it appears to be," I feel.

I've noticed two times in Kathleen's work where she says "Nothing is as it appears to be." 

In a 2015 talk, she said, 

Nothing is what it appears to be. Nothing at all is what it appears to be. And I have learned that in my many years not only of taking psychedelics but working with native peoples who seem to understand that much better than our materially oriented cultures do—that “everything is an illusion and everything may change from what it appears to be now to something else at any moment” is kind of a rule to live by.

In an essay in the 2019 anthology Psychedelic Mysteries of the Feminine, she shared two lessons she'd learned. The first was the Ram Dass quote "Be here now." 

The second helpful tip, a profound tip at that, although harder yet to decipher, is that “Nothing is as it appears to be.” This is not glib. I have learned this truth, not only by examining this concept while on psychedelics but also by living and working with native peoples—peoples whose belief systems have evolved and been sustained for many centuries. These are people who seem to understand and negotiate with the very nature of illusion. These are cultures that have sustained active and continuing animistic beliefs, cultures that practice shamanism and educate their children through stories and hands-on experience with nature. Some of them use psychedelic species of plants or mushrooms, some don’t. They all seem to grasp the reality of illusions much better than our “Western,” materially oriented cultures do. In the deeply grounded awareness that everything is an illusion, one understands that everything may change from what it appears to be now to something else, at any moment. Everything. It’s actually a fine rule to live by. It is one version of the principle of uncertainty.

Kathleen was recently attacked in her home. A GoFundMe was started, and it's still open for donations. Donations will go toward helping her recover and will also give her time and resources to focus on writing. Some of her writing can be read here (on Salvia divinorum) and here (on the Mazatec).

Leave Society's "first pass"

After a book is copy-edited and the author goes through the copy-edits, accepting or rejecting them while making more edits, the publisher implements the edits and lays out the book and sends it back to the author in a file called "first pass." Or at least this is what has happened with most of my books.

I blogged about copy-edits around two months ago. My publisher sent me the copy-edited draft of my novel on October 23. I went through the edits on the computer on October 26, 27, and 28. Then I printed the draft and edited it by hand and implemented my edits to the MSWord file over 9 days, working an average of 4 hours per day, until the day it was due, November 6, when I turned it in.

On December 2, I got the laid-out PDF "first pass" file of my novel. It had all the edits I'd accepted and/or made in the copy-edited draft. It was 353 pages. I like the layout. It looks like this:

I printed it and worked on it an average of 3.5 hours a day for 8 days, from December 7 to 14, hand-editing and implementing the edits for 7 days and then, on the 8th day, reviewing the edits—299 of them—on the computer screen, in Adobe Reader, reversing and tweaking some edits, for a final of 288 edits. The edits were tiny and small. I added around 15 paragraph breaks, fixed some things that weren't fixed or were missed in copy-edits (like unitalicizing foreign words), deleted around 150 words, added some words for clarity purposes, and changed some things back that I'd changed in previous drafts.

On the 6th and 7th days, also, I went through the edits with my girlfriend, who is an editor, getting her feedback. She helped me to not overdo it when deleting words for the purpose, in part, of minimizing having lines with just one word on it—"orphans," these seem to be called. I feel satisfied getting rid of "orphans," partly because I like editing down, which almost always seems good, but I know it can be overdone. An example of this that I feel satisfied about and doesn't seem overdone to me:

Gazelles seem kind of similar to deer, and there were already enough animals listed, I felt.

An example of where I added a paragraph break:

Some words/phrases/sentences I deleted:

-which holistic dentists had been removing from mouths for decades

-chillingly

-since the eighties

-rhetorically

-as an immaterial being

-and focus

-and so habitually moved carefuler than necessary

-somewhat vaguely, Li would realize years later, rereading the agreement emails

-tribally

-in the nineties

-He’d finished five of its eleven chapters.

-loosely

-in 1924 and 1926

-It was closer than New York to Taiwan.

-gazelles

-observing pigeons and squirrels

-couscous, eggplant, shiso, and 

-cramps and

-on his floor

-covering it with probiotic capsules

-involuntary

-Maybe neither of them was.

-consideration or

-chronically

-he knew

-butthole

-the place where he felt most alienated, beleaguered, and insane

Today was my 9th day working on "first pass." I checked four things that I still felt unsure about, then sent the file to my publisher. Due in part to my planning (editing around 50 pages a day, leaving two days to review), going through "first pass" has been a calm, enjoyable experience. 

My novel seems 0.02 percent to 0.4 percent (seems hard to estimate) improved to me now, after "first pass." It will be out on August 3, 2021. It can be added on Goodreads.

Leave Society's copy edits

Copy-editing is when a person called a copy editor edits a book after the author and editor have finished working on a book. I didn't understand copy-editing at first. My first times getting copy-edited were with my first prose books Bed and Eeeee Eee Eeee. It didn't make sense to me for a publisher to pay another person, besides the author and the editor, to read and edit a book. 

Now I understand copy-editing. A book is so complicated that even with the author and editor going through it many times, there will likely be some-to-many mistakes—style choices that aren't consistent, things that unintentionally don't make sense, facts and dates being wrong, etc.

I got the copy edits for Leave Society last week, and it included a style sheet, which I think I haven't gotten before. The style sheet had (1) a list of style rules that the copy editor discerned that I used and some errors that she corrected (2) a list of certain words in the novel (3) a list of names in the novel (4) a timeline of the novel's events from 1971 to 2018.

Here are the words:

Acheulean
Adderall
Airbnb
Altamonte Mall
American Dental Association
amnesic
Angelika Film Center
ankylosing spondylitis
anticancer
aprotinin
Aquarium Barcelona
authoritarianly
ayo

bathroomward
Bellevue South Park
beta-carbolines
bobbleheadish
Bobst Library
Bonefish Grill
brainwardly
breathwork
BSA
bù xíng le
bucranium, bucrania
Bunun

California Department of Education
camu camu
Carp Mountain
Çatalhöyük
chelidon
chestfeel
Citi Bike
Cocoa Beach
Cotton Field
counter-possibility
Crestor

Daan Park Station
Dao, Daoist
Daodejing
dementogens
demercurization
derangingly
deshoe
destructionalia
Diamond Head
diamorphine
DMT
DPP
Dr. Bronner’s
dreamworld
DuckDuckGo
DUMBO
dysbiotic

East River Park
eBay
ebook
echo-y
electrosmog
Elephant Mountain
email
emotioned
Ensure
Environmental Working Group
estrone sulfate
extincting

FamilyMart
farmer’s market
FedEx
Flamingo Mountain
Foot Locker
furiouser

GABA
G-gǎi
Goddess (singular female deity)
Goddess Temple
Gokhale Method
guāi
guìbīn
gylany, gylanies

Haldol
Haleiwa
healthcare
Hercules–Corona Borealis Great Wall
hermitude
High Line
Hi-Life
homeostaticity
Hongshan
hough
Hutchison Effect

Internet
irrationalia

K2
keycard
KMT
Konya Plain
kratom

languaging
La Rambla
LASIK
leapt
LEGO
Levoxyl
lifedrops

MacBook
Magic (collector cards)
mandalic
MC
metatwinkling
microfireflies
mitochondriated
MK-ULTRA
modafinil
moxic

N-95
National Taiwan University
Nerf
Nexium
ng
niànjīng
N-machine
non-debilitating
non-native
Norwich Meadows Farm
not good (adj; hyphenate before noun)
Nuss procedure

Old Europe
Olive Garden
omming
orthotropics
overmind
overunity

Paiwan
pectus excavatum
Personality Assessment System
phubbing
phytoncides
pig-dragon
plasmoid
pleurodesis
polysorbate 80
post-dinner
powerHouse Arena
pre-dinner
preexisting

quarterheartedly

rereturn
Round Mountain

Salvia divinorum
sandbaggish
sǎo mù
schtick
Science Channel
Sesklo
shadowbanned
shit-talking
singularityward
SK-II
sleepward
specieal
starclock
Steak and Ale
stomachdown
Stuyvesant Square
Sunset Beach
Superfund
synesthesiated

Taichung
Taipei Main Station
tetched
Thyro-Gold
Tiger Mountain
Time Landscape
Tom Sawyer Island
Tompkins Square Park
transauditory

unstabler
unupset

valleying
Varna
Vermont State Hospital
Vinča
visiblizing

wah
Waialua
Waialua Public Library
Wekiwa Springs
wheellike
Whole Epiphany Temple
WP Thyroid

Xanax
Xia
xiǎo rén
Ximen Station

Yae Sushi
Yangmingshan National Park
Yangshao
YG, YGing
Yilan County
Younger Dryas

Zhaobaogou

Zhou Dynasty

*

Related: I recommended six nonfiction books that are referenced in Leave Society.

Leave Society's table of contents

Leave Society has 4 parts and 32 chapters. I worked on each chapter so that they could each work as a short story. The chapters range from ~1300 words to ~8000 words.

Year of Mercury

Surgery

Teeth

Yoga

Dentists

Barcelona

Florida

Year of Pain

Hand

Bunun

Hospital

Massage

Machines

Ankylosing

Thyroid

Prison

Blame

Microfireflies

Year of Mountains

Mediation

Catatonia

Falling

Crestor and Coffee

Friendship

China

Momo

Resonance

Variations 

Year of Detox

Dudu 

Brain

Upset 

Nüwa

Curse

Dustwinkling

Fruitresting

Dudu and Didi

Below is a deleted scene from Leave Society. This scene occurs in a park by Li's parents' apartment in Taipei. Didi was edited out of the novel. The only dogs in the novel now are, I think, Dudu and Momo.  

*

They encountered Didi, a small, male, shirted dog. Dudu and Didi seemed uninterested in each other. “From behind, they look very similar,” said Li’s dad, as he did every time the two dogs met. 

            The walk continued. 

            Li’s dad called Didi "dāi bǎn." 

            “Dāi means stupid, right?” said Li. 

            “Right,” said Li’s mom. “Bǎn means board.” 

            “What kind of board? Wood?” 

            Li’s dad said a cutting board. 

            Li asked if dāi bǎn meant conventional and unexceptional. 

            Li’s dad said it meant “unable to change” and “goes by rules.” 

            Li’s mom said it meant “not flexible.” 

            "Dad called Didi dāi bǎn," said Li, amused. 

            "He has to criticize everything,” said Li’s mom.

Calmness

On December 10, 2019, I tweeted "My novel Leave Society is a threat to everyone including me" but now after two more drafts I think it's more of a gentle, calm suggestion or idea. 

The protagonist of the novel, Li, views leaving society as "a relative thing." He has lived in NYC since 2001 and in midtown Manhattan since 2011, and has been immersed in pessimistic, neurotic, nature-ignoring cultures and subcultures for decades, and so he feels that "almost any change would qualify."

In my novel, leaving society is mostly viewed as a mental and chemical and cultural thing. One can leave society to varying degrees by changing what one reads, for example. By replacing—to any degree—newspapers with nonfiction books that reference outside the mainstream, one is leaving society.

My novel defines "society" as "dominator society"—the thing almost everyone seems to have been embedded in for around 6,000 years. The other end of the continuum of social organization from "dominator" is "partnership." Riane Eisler invented these terms in The Chalice and the Blade (1987).

Author photos

I got large, round glasses around two years ago because the frames don't block as much of my vision as frames of glasses with smaller lens do, and because there's less distortion on the edges. 

They seem normal to me now, but sometimes I've been aware though that I look "less credible" to some or most people while wearing them, in part because they look somewhat Harry Potter-like. Credibility has been more important to me since 2013 or so when I started reading a lot of nonfiction books, doing research on nature and society, and writing about my research. So for my author photo that I just sent my publisher I used my credible glasses, with smaller lens.

This glasses topic was in my forthcoming novel, Leave Society, but it was deleted in an early draft. A draft from November 2018 said:

The next day, walking alone stoned, Li realized he slightly tilted his head back all the time so that the top part of his glasses frames wouldn’t block his vision. He realized that if he wore glasses with huge round frames, his whole body would assume a more natural position. Realizing people would think he was wearing atypical glasses just to be weird, he felt reluctant to do it.  

*Photos by Yuka Igarashi

*Update* After discussing with Yuka, I decided to also send a round-glasses photo. *Update*

Leave Society third draft

I finished the third draft of my novel today. It's 1952 words or 2.4% shorter than the second draft. I worked on the third draft from July 29 to August 25. It's in four parts. I read and edited the first part once, then read and edited the second part twice and did the same for the third and fourth parts, then went through the whole book a final time. It's ~80,300 words now. My main method of editing for this novel has been to repeatedly go through it beginning to end. 

My editor thought the word "recovery" should be better defined, and I worked on that by copy-pasting every instance of "recovery" in the novel into another file, reading through it occasionally, and thinking of what to add or change. I previously did this with other threads in the novel too—a meta thread (in which the protagonist is writing the novel), a thread on "the mystery", a thread on microfireflies, a thread on the end of history, a thread on the partnership-dominator fall.

I had two files open whenever I was working on the novel. One was the novel. One was a file with unused material and metadata and other things, like a to-do list for the novel. In the latter file, I organized unused material into topics. I had/have these topics:

Autism

Bickering

Big Bang

Blaming

Blushing

Caldicotting

Cannabis

Change

Coleman

Compulsive-recursive

Consciousness

Cosmos

Cotton Field

Daoism

Degneration

Diet Coke

Doctors

Dreams

Drugs

Drug phase

Earth

Electricity

EMR

EMR—photons/electrons

EMR—schumann resonance

Exercise inventions

Emergent properties

EMF

Emily Martin

Feelings

Fertility

Friends

Glyphosate

Hutchison Effect

Ily

Jesus

Kathleen Harrison

Imagination

Learning

Living

Mercury

Meta

MKULTRA

Microbiome

And so on. Here is an example of what unused material I had in a topic (for Daoism):

-In China, metaphysics was called xuánxué, the dark learning, he knew from Ellen Marie Chen. Its main texts were Zhuangzi, Daodejing, and I Ching or Book of Changes. Chen defined xuánxué, which also translated to “the mystery school” and was close to Daoism, as “the search for what humans consider to be the profoundest values and their efforts to embody these values.”

-on how Dao may have originally been a female deity represented by a circle, which bifurcated into yin and yang

-and Mágū, a Daoist deity associated with cannabis and caves. 

-on the Daodejing’s “emphasis on the feminine,”

-“origin was rooted in the worship of the Mother-goddess”

-Dao was playful, spontaneous

-Translate “dark” line myself—玄 之 又 玄

-玄 was in Daodejing 12 times

-Laozi was an older contemporary of Confucius.

-Daodejing is “a hymm to the power and love of Tao as the Great Mother.”

-Chen called death “merely one stage of Life’s endless transformations”

-that when people see something mysterious, they say very xuán. 

-In Daoism, wrote Chen, “the grotesque and deformed and weak” belonged more to the process of change and so were “closer to the Mother.”

-xuan—"black, dark; mysterious, profound, abstruse, arcane”

-and wrote the Daodejing before going, post-retirement, to live in seclusion

-which was attributed to Laozi (literally “old teacher”), and which Chen felt was more fittingly called “the old wisdom,” 

-of the trinity of birth-death-rebirth

Acknowledgements

I worked on Leave Society's acknowledgements' page today. The first thing I did was check what I put for Trip, my previous book and second book to have an acknowledgements page:

Thank you to my family and friends; to Kathleen Harrison, Finn McKenna, and Klea McKenna; to Tim O’Connell, Bill Clegg, and Angie Venezia; and to my publisher, Vintage.

Then I came up with this:

Thank you to my parents, parents’ dog, brother, nephew, uncle, aunt, friends, partner, editor (Tim O’Connell), agent (Bill Clegg), publicist (Angie Venezia), and publisher (Vintage).

I like it because it's a fractal summation of the novel, and could gently remind the reader a little of what happened, after they finish reading it, and because it's brief. An overly long acknowledgements page could make the reader forget what they just read, take them out of the dream of the novel.

My first book with an acknowledgements page was Taipei, which just said, "Thank you to my editor, Tim O’Connell, and my agent, Bill Clegg." Before Taipei, I didn't want to have an acknowledgements page. I didn't know who to thank, and it seemed somehow not fitting with the books I published to be thanking people at the end of the book. I felt too alone, and like I was working alone, and also like it was obvious from the books' contents who I was thankful for. It still seems obvious now, with my previous two books and next book, but I work more closely with my editor now than with my pre-Taipei books and also have an agent and a publicist (not a private publicist but the one who works at my publisher).

Pruning completion

I've continued pruning this week. This will be my last pruning post. I've finished pruning. The past six days, I pruned 91, 151, 122, 66, 88, and 45 words, working by pen/paper and computer in morning for 2-3 hours and at night by pen/paper for around an hour. Part 3 of my novel is now 1030 words shorter than in the second draft. It went from 29,957 to 28,927 words. It took eight days to go through it twice. I pruned an average of 125.375 words per day. After I go through part 4—there are some things I want to transplant there from the other parts—the third draft will be done. I think the cover is being made now by my publisher. We reconsidered the title for a few days and decided to keep Leave Society. I'm looking forward to posting unused material that isn't pruned material in future posts in this weekly series. Here is what I pruned from Tuesday-Sunday (besides prunings of one or two words, which I didn't save):

-The other movements were fast. 

-Using pigments made from azurite, limonite, soot, woad, weld, and other minerals and plants

-had also been rectangular, one-roomed, and kitchened 

-the worst-seeming place for careful contemplation 

-seemingly life-long 

-Daodejing, 3422; The Bible, 13,220

-Li said there used to be more birds everywhere, that the title of the book Silent Spring referred to the eerie silence in many places due to pesticides inadvertently killing many birds. 

-He wanted to elaborate, but sensed he would seem and feel unreasonable. 

-Kay said at a book event the previous night in a group of people she’d said she’d been rolling cigarettes with organic tobacco, and there’d been no response. She’d felt like she had a secret. Li said he felt that way when researching nature and society. 

-or be able to live without a caretaker 

-The sharing brought them closer to one another. 

-corruption whistleblowers 

-send photos of food, or 

-and so he felt safe 

-and that he wanted to be weirder, so that when he encountered compelling yet obscure information, he’d feel encouraged to explore instead of ignore or suppress 

-and triggered health problems 

-They were on the platform where he’d escalated away from and immediately back to his parents the previous day. 

-Li flapped and deepbreathed while facing the waterfall. 

-“I have papers coming out that will be read in a hundred years." 

-Li said his nonfiction book referenced thirty papers. 

-That night, drawing in his room, Li listened to his dad talk on the phone to one of his employees. After a long silence, Li’s dad started talking again, repeating a question. Li’s mom, in the kitchen, interrupted him, saying she’d thought he’d been talking to his employee. “No,” said Li’s dad, and repeated the question. Li left his room smiling and saw his mom’s annoyed face. Seeing his smile, she smiled. 

-time, space, imagination 

-It still doesn’t feel right. 

-“There wasn’t any ‘will not’ when you left?” said Li. 

-“Maybe some people said it, but you didn’t know them,” said Li. 

-who’d lived until he was eighteen 

-like picking up blood test results 

-instead of trying to use it against her 

-wearing earphones at his desk 

-because he’d wanted to be near his dad. 

-At Whole Foods, Li realized Mike had a seemingly unique facial expression in which he flattened his cheeks in a kind of metaexpression, over which he could layer smiles, smirks, frowns. 

-He says when you view it like this, it can help you calm down, and do something. 

-except birthday and Christmas gifts 

-as he’d started doing in emails lately 

-leading from roof to height-staggered roof 

-or lipstick

More pruning

On August 6, I started noting how many words I pruned each day from the second draft of my novel, Leave Society, pruning on the screen and on paper in the morning and just on paper at night.

August 6: 67 words 

August 7: 99 words

August 8: 62 words

August 9: 234 words

August 10: 244 words

Here is most of what I pruned on August 9 and 10, from my four-part novel's third part, which is called Year of Mountains:

-"Yes,” said Li. “Japan’s government has been promoting forest-bathing since 1982.” 
-began playing in the station, priming the train’s arrival. 
-and steeped green tea 
-more movement and sunlight 
-Sometimes he wanted to get totally away, disappear for years. 
-which sometimes made him feel like he had to assuage both himself and his mom, compounding both their worries 
-an example of when going to a hospital had helped 
-as she always did when Li lifted her to something 
-collected leaves from inch plants, which regulated blood sugar, and aluminum plants, whose aesthetic he liked, then 
-Li’s dad said he’d dreamed they’d lost Dudu. He’d put up flyers that said two kilograms, white, poodle, and 0.1 concentration, a detail from his equations. 
-through armed invasion and land seizure 
-somewhat pessimistically, Li felt 
-as he’d planned to ask for months. 
 -“Du must have thought we abandoned her and that Auntie saved her,” said Li’s mom. “I believe this is why she loves Auntie so much.” 
-Li said he wanted to save “embarrassed” for its original meaning. 
-though he knew it could return stronger 
-Her ancestors all ate lamb. 
-Let the children's laughter remind us how we used to be. 
-“If I eat it all the time, then definitely…eating it rarely, how could anything happen?”
-lying on his back in his room, Li deep-breathed for two minutes, then held his breath to a timer. After around a minute, he had a YG. When he returned, he somehow believed he was in 4K in 2012. Clustering dread dissolved to relieved gratitude as he realized he was in Taiwan in 2017. 
-with a small toothbrush 
-with a wet nub of tissue paper 
-"Were they two females and one male?" said Li. 

-"We don't know what they were," said Li’s mom. 
-He noticed someone wearing a shirt that said “lifk is short” and he and his parents laughed, wondering if “lifk” was a typo of “life.” 
-searched “lifk,” which didn’t seem to be a word, and 
-the supposed founder of Daoism

-Li said he’d “at least look at everything in there.” 
-which was sometimes translated as “the way” 
-They entered a plaza where young males were seated cross-legged in groups, looking at phones. Li’s dad asked one of them what he was waiting for. He said an anime convention. 
-(once airborne he had to wait as he floated down)

-Anions could form indoors via plants, air ionizing machines, crystal salt lamps, and running water, he’d read.

Some of those I might re-insert, because I'm going through each part twice on this edit—pruning and then, while discerning the effects of my prunes and reviewing what I've pruned, pruning again.

Pruning

This is the second post in my weekly feature where I post unused material from my forthcoming novel Leave Society. I've been working on its third draft. My editor had some small suggestions on the second draft, including to prune the second and third parts, Year of Pain and Year of Mountains, by around 1000 and 2000 words. Today and yesterday I pruned these sentences and fragments from Year of Pain:

-I wouldn’t have tested them like that. 

-That won’t help.

-“Maybe if you’re nicer to her, she’ll let you,” said Li.

-“And fish oil and chlorella,” said Li, putting capsules and tablets in a plastic bag.

-creating scar tissue

-Li didn’t respond. 

-and should get a blood test to find out

-he felt like he was blindly searching for a secret opening. 

-In the hall, on the way to the bathroom, he imagined someone watching him and feeling confused about what he was doing. 

-It caused chest constriction, lung fibrosis, fever, fatigue, and a hunched back. 

-Li said he was glad they listened to him.

-Li cried too, in a New York University computer lab, where he often teared while working on short stories.

-Another was serving two years for drinking beer in a state park. 

-with prison blueprints 

*UPDATE* I reinserted the sentence "Li cried too, in a New York University computer lab, where he often teared while working on short stories" into the novel as "Li cried too, reading his mom’s email in a New York University computer lab, where he often teared while working on short stories on sadness and loneliness." *UPDATE*

LS unused material 1

I want to post unused material from my forthcoming novel Leave Society on this blog once a week. If I do this once a week until it comes out next summer, I'll have done it 52 times, which seems okay/good. This is a sentence I tried to put in the novel for a while but that didn't fit:

In 2009, Mission: Readiness, a nonprofit founded by retired military leaders, published a report titled “Ready, Willing, and Unable to Serve” that said 75 percent of Americans between the ages of 17 to 24 were unfit to serve in the military because of health problems, mental illness, criminal record, lack of education, and other issues.

Novel update and blog announcement

I turned in the second draft of my novel Leave Society, forthcoming summer 2021 from Vintage Books, on July 15. It’s ~82,000 words. Each of my novels has gotten longer. Eeeee Eee Eeee was ~35k words. Richard Yates was ~50k words. Taipei was ~75k words. I feel calm and wise having a steadily increasing novel length. I want my next novel to be shorter, though, maybe ~50k words.

Here are the word counts of all the drafts so far (the Jan 17, 2020 one counts as the first draft because it’s the first one I showed my editor/agent) of Leave Society:

Oct 12, 2018. 143,452 words.
Nov 22, 2018. 111,672 words, without prologue
Mar 6, 2019. 97,059 words, 7 parts, 50 chapters
May 7, 2019. 82,173 words, 4 parts, 40 chapters
Jul 21, 2019. 83,063 words, 4 parts, 36 chapters
Nov 4, 2019. 87,201 words, 4 parts, 35 chapters
Jan 17, 2020. 91,300 words, 4 parts, 32 chapters
July 15, 2020. 82,205 words, 4 parts, 31 chapters

The novel is set from November 2014 to January 2018. I used 526,939 words of notes—and probably around 100 hours of Voice Memos—that I took from October 2013 to January 2020 to help me write it. The 143,452 draft mentioned above is selections from the notes.

Some reasons I decided to start a blog:

1. I don't like everything I publish, on Medium, Patreon, Twitter, Instagram, having likes/favorites. It seems detrimental to mental health for everything I publish to have a number attached to it showing how much people like it.
2. I have a lot of extra material from writing Leave Society that I can talk about here, for example books or papers that I wanted to reference but didn't fit in the novel.
3. I liked having a blog from 2005-2013. It was called Reader of Depressing Books and four of the posts can still be read here. I regret deleting the rest of the blog. I probably had hundreds of posts. In 2013 and again in 2018 I had strong desires to winnow down my internet presence. Now it seems better to me to have more, rather than less, of my stuff online.
4. I liked when my friends had blogs and we all linked to each other's blogs on our blogs.

Another thought:

I decided to just have the default urls for my sites, for example having my main site by taolin.tumblr.com, and this blog be leavesociety.blogspot.com, in part because I used to have taolin.info and somehow I couldn't get it renewed. There was some problem with Google, so I lost the url, and had to relink all my sites to my new url. Seems easier to just have the default url.