III: "I guess I'll have to change - er - make - my plan..."

"Write something about the Reader!" suggested the Tragic Romantic.

The Reader is a shape shifter. She most often takes the form of a cat (if she chooses to take any form at all - quite often she prefers to be invisible, perhaps the only being in this world to have such a desire). Sometimes the cat transforms the end of her tail into glasses which she raises to whichever self happens to need to use them, most frequently the Writer. Regardless of what form she takes, she never has a mouth and cannot speak.

The Reader is the only one to have traveled outside of the Mirrors of Self. She takes an extensive video-journal wherever she goes, sharing it with everyone freely through an instantaneous telepathic communi-Kate-ion ("That was terrible," said the Anxious One). It is in great measure because of her that the inner world can be so lush and brilliant.

***

About a year and a half ago, there had been discussion about writing a short story that had never been given a title because it had never come to fruition. The images from the story sometimes resurfaced from time to time.

The story would have been about a girl who was looking for a friend. She lived in a world where everybody had little latched doors on their stomachs ("How would that even work?" asked the Researcher) leading to a small chamber where each person carried a brilliant ball of white light. Many of the doors had a small window revealing the light to those around them. Some were open a crack. The girl in search of a friend was especially skilled at peering into the doors of others, even going so far as to pry some of them open with brute force. Hers, however, was windowless, locked tight and she was cursed with the fate to have a particularly powerful and blinding ball of light within. If someone managed to somehow have enough patience to open her door, or compell her to cautiously open it to them, even the faintest glimpse at her light would be so forceful and magnificent that it would cause the potential friend to stumble back, clutching their eyes in exquisite pain. For this girl there had never been a friend who could look at her light without eventually killing themselves.

***

The Researcher scratched her head. Weren't they supposed to be writing a novel about their novel? Why was this pointless, over-emotional, imaginary story circulating again, then? It didn't have any kind of basis on reality, anyway. There was no real, tangible, empirical evidence to suggest that friendship was something at which they sucked. To measure that, one would have to somehow gather the data for it across time, certainly which would also account for all the myriad successes. Probably some of the successes were not even particularly visible; looking at things objectively, she would probably be forced to admit that there were surprising ways at which she both sucked and excelled at friendshipping. 

The Researcher continued to think about this. A value would have to be assigned to each friendship, and they would have to be ranked against one another, which was obviously a morally repulsive thought - measuring the "value" of a person. Anyway, the data would be both impractical if not wholly impossible to gather, especially since it would be impossible to divest herself of her own personal biases. And the all important question: would it be productive? What would such an effort tell her about herself, what would be the point of such a study? 

If anything, merely imagining objectively cataloging past friendship successes was the only part of this whole exercises that had any true value.

The Researcher smiled. There were good reasons why she was the most well-loved of all of them in the Mirrors of Self. She was often the only one whose trust could not be doubted.

(I, the Writer, would like to add that I also strive for honesty and authenticity in all my work, and so even I must admit that sometimes my biases come through more than I - or the Researcher - would like. The Researcher is much more vigilant about fighting her biases, while my goals are more connected to storytelling itself. Even a slightly tainted story - if written - is more valuable to me than my personal moral value of being open, honest, objective, true etc.)

***

The Researcher had set up several folding chairs in a circle. Not everybody within the Mirrors of Self would show up, but better to be prepared.

The others slowly started to assemble. The Anxious One was looking particularly sullen. She was sitting back in her chair with her arms folded across her chest, her legs crossed, and was scowling at everybody. About once a month her crabbiness became overly accentuated. Meanwhile, the Tragic Romantic had streams of mascara running down her face and was trying very hard to choke back silent sobs about how they had run out of eggs that morning and how that was the Worst Possible Thing to Ever Have Happened Since the Dawn of Time.

The Researcher began: "We are meeting today because of three things. You should each have your agenda?" Papers had been passed out.

"Writer, you'll be taking notes?"

"Do you even have to ask that?" scoffed the Anxious One.

"It's good to have everything in order," replied the Researcher, not missing a beat. She was not at all offended by the Anxious One, and in fact, they were usually very close friends; it was easy to accept and that sometimes, the Anxious One was just a little bit crazy, and it was something to be overlooked.

"Okay! So, Item Number One: Deadlines." 

"Why do we have to have deadlines? It's too...it's too...restricting!" cried the Tragic Romantic. She was very much an in-the-moment kind of person, always being blown about by the latest whim. She was basically always composing some kind of dialogue with someone else, or some kind of poem, or some kind of status update which she titled, "The Pulse of Kate." It was sometimes very stupid, and the Writer (that's me) was often pretty loathe to let it see the light of day.

"I think it's the only possible way we will ever finish this project," said the Researcher. "That is, if we have all agreed that it is something worth finishing?" 

The Philosopher, sometimes known as the Wishy-Washy One, started to clear her throat. She always did that before she wanted to make a speech. She was wearing a toga (The Anxious One wants it to be noted that it is a modest toga lest you get any crazy ideas). The Researcher winced a little bit. It was sometimes quite difficult for her to be patient with the Philosopher's rants. 

 The Mystic had walked over and put her hand on the Philosopher's shoulder as a way of saying, "hush, don't even start." "Oh...fine," said the Philosopher. The Mystic returned to her yoga mat. She was wearing her favorite tank top (the Anxious One wants it to be noted that it is a modest tank top - but the truth is it probably isn't, but don't worry, there's not much that the Mystic needs to worry about revealing). The tank top was a faded print of a cat doing yoga with the caption, "Na-Meow-Ste." (The Anxious One also wants me to note that she does not approve of it.)

"So! Deadlines. We want to write a novel. Rather, the Tragic Romantic kind of pushed us into this project, we already published something online - it's left the Mirrors of Self. I see this as a kind of commitment. We can't back out on our commitments, right?"

The others all nodded in assent. The Tragic Romantic was scribbling down some notes for a new poem about how no matter how hard they tried, they always seemed to fail at their commitments.

"So! Let's think of some deadlines. I've done some research, and I guess our novel should be around 80k words or so. We have about 2k so far in the unedited version of chapter one, but I guess it should be a total of about 5k per chapter, which would put us at about 16 chapters?"

"Let's round it up to 20 chapters, since that's a nice even number," suggested the Writer. "It also gives us a little bit more breathing room for the size of a chapter." 

"Chapter One really does suck. Our sister said it made her laugh. It wasn't supposed to make people laugh. We should just give up!" the Tragic Romantic picked up another tissue to blow her nose.

"Chapter One is raw and unedited. We're obviously not finished with it. But this meeting is not an editing meeting."

The Anxious One scowled. She had been looking forward to slashing through that pile of writing with sharp, ferocious daggers. 

"No, it really isn't," said the Researcher, matter-of-factly. "Look at your Agenda." 

"Okay! So if there are 20 chapters, and the first chapter is done-ish, and if we can write say, a chapter every week, that should get us done by about, um...mid-Aprilish?" the Writer was a little bit sad that it would take that long. She wished every moment of every day could be spent writing.

"That's not very long, don't worry," assured the Researcher.

"Is this pre-editing?" asked the Anxious One.

"Yes."

The Anxious One Scowled.

"We will never get this project finished," moaned the Tragic Romantic.

"Well, perhaps not, true, but all we can really do is try. It seems like a fun, diverting project for the winter, and the fact that we have this - this -" 

"Muse?" posited the Philosopher. "It does seem that we always tend to need a muse for our writing, doesn't it? The traditional ones are Epic Poetry, History, Music/Lyrics, Love, Tragedy, Hymns, Dance, Comedy, and Astronomy - so who would ours be?" The Philosopher tended to ask a lot of questions.

The Anxious One rolled her eyes. "I guess our muses would be bullsh*t, crap, bunk, drivel, nonsense, garbage, refuse, idiocy, and asininity." 

"I literally just looked those words up in a Thesaurus for you, you know!" said the Researcher.

"Aren't our muses technically real people who are outside of the Mirrors of Self? Or are they ideas?" the Philosopher was about to stand up again. The Tragic Romantic was flipping to a new page in her notebook. The Writer was scrambling to keep up with what was going on. 

She often had difficulties doing this. Sometimes it was like the running internal dialogue was like a wild horse that had escaped before it was properly saddled.  

"What the **** do you know about horses? So now you are going to pretend that you know anything about horses?" the Anxious One growled.

The Reader-Cat hissed at the Anxious One, which was her way of saying that she had traveled into many novels which had involved horses and horseback-riding. The Researcher was really tempted to prove the Anxious One wrong by going off on a tangent into Wikipedia but the Mystic had given her a mug of steaming hot tea and was pointing at the Agenda. The Anxious One wanted it to be noted that it was herbal tea. She tended to need to have the last word most of the time.

"Look, I can try my very best to get one of these installments out every week. But it will be a little bit difficult, what with all the other projects and goals - many of them writing - many of them that don't even involve life behind the Mirrors of Self that much." 

"Oh, you mean like, your real life?" The Anxious One was now glowering at them all with a kind of sickening smile. 

"'What' 'is' 'real' anyway?" asked the Philosopher.

"OKAY - so, we have committed to at least one chapter per week, then? Or at least, to try for it? Shall we commit to that officially?" asked the Researcher.

There was a general murmur of assent.

"Okay! Item Number Two: Planning Meetings. Should we have about one planning meeting per chapter, then? Does that make sense?"

There was another general murmur of assent.

"We should try to have some kind of agenda, right?" 

"I guess the real benefit from these planning meetings will be the - the - pep-talk-iness of them," said the Writer. 

"That, and the fact that it is pretty much another way of committing ourselves to the project. Isn't it?" The Philosopher was about to stand up but the Researcher had already quickly stood. 

"Okay! I think we have come to some pretty logical conclusions. We each have our own individual purposes for embarking on this project, we have a plan about how we can finish it, we have some deadlines - now let's get to work. This meeting is officially adjourned!"

The Anxious One would have liked to have ripped the first chapter to pieces right then and there, but it was no use. The others were already going to their respective offices, each of which looked very different from the others'. The Anxious One did not have her own separate office, but tended to just loom around whichever of them was in charge at the moment. She did have an extensive system of filing cabinets in which she tucked away all kinds of memories - mostly embarrassing or negative - which she could pull from at a moment's notice (certainly this is where their unfinished short story was kept, though it had been a collaborative project with the Tragic Romantic). 

But when the others were busy, it was exceedingly difficult for the Anxious One to know which memory to draw from, so she tended to instead just turn to muttering things under her breath at them. This is precisely why they needed another Big, Ridiculous, Silly Project at this time, after all. 

A low-stakes, high-rewards project.

This novel would be the perfect project.