They're Back!

Moment of truth: I have had Diary block since I ended Diary of an Agent's Sister. It's not writer's block, because I've been able to write Ryan and Lucy. Sascha and Alex have just been suspiciously silent for almost a month now. I discovered the problem in English (hey, I learned something. Who cares if it wasn't what was being taught?) in an essay by Nicholas Carr called "Is Google Making us Stupid?" The influence came from:
Sometime in 1882, Friedrich Nietzsche bought a typewriter—a Malling-Hansen Writing Ball, to be precise. His vision was failing, and keeping his eyes focused on a page had become exhausting and painful, often bringing on crushing headaches. He had been forced to curtail his writing, and he feared that he would soon have to give it up. The typewriter rescued him, at least for a time. Once he had mastered touch-typing, he was able to write with his eyes closed, using only the tips of his fingers. Words could once again flow from his mind to the page.

But the machine had a subtler effect on his work. One of Nietzsche’s friends, a composer, noticed a change in the style of his writing. His already terse prose had become even tighter, more telegraphic. “Perhaps you will through this instrument even take to a new idiom,” the friend wrote in a letter, noting that, in his own work, his “‘thoughts’ in music and language often depend on the quality of pen and paper.”

“You are right,” Nietzsche replied, “our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts.” Under the sway of the machine, writes the German media scholar Friedrich A. Kittler, Nietzsche’s prose “changed from arguments to aphorisms, from thoughts to puns, from rhetoric to telegram style.”

A long English lesson, I know, I'm sorry. But it told me the problem! I'd always written Sascha's Diary on pen and paper. I'd been trying to write Diary 2 on my laptop, and it wasn't working. Why? Because Sascha's Diary isn't typed on a computer, it's handwritten! (face palm)

So yes, finally I got through to Sascha, and even Alex was pretty vocal tonight. I learned Sascha's call sign (it's a secret). Alex and I are still hashing over his call sign (what do you think?). I also think I have the name for the Agency headquarters, which I think is also secret.

Of course though, Sascha could never come back into my life easily. OH no. When did she decide to come? In the middle of my early Biology class, when I had to shield my crazy writing so the cute boy next to me wouldn't think I was keeping a journal about my own personal adventures in a secret government training facility. I am not that cool. Oh well.

So the writing is back into the swing! YAY! Hopefully you guys will hear from our favorite friends soon.

Love, Jordy