
It appears that my current work-in-progress (title pending; current working title is “How Quickly We Forget”) came to me in a dream just over a year ago. Just for fun I took a snapshot of the git commits[1]nerds gonna nerd,[2]speaking of nerds gonna nerd: apparently tac in Linux will spit out a text file in reverse order, the opposite of cat on the project, and here’s what I’ve done so far (no spoilers that I know of):
- Initial commit
- First few ¶s — 2024-11-17
- 2024-11-23 morning
- 2024-11-23 evening
- Updates prior to 02-Sep-2025
- Added a few notes for later inclusion (or at least consideration)
- A quick snippet for the moment right before the Time Jump
- Intro: the diaries arrive; some notes
- Starting to get into the whole swing of the narration
- Added .gitignore
- Converted all the section breaks to
#, which is my preferred notation - Tonight’s writing
- a couple possible titles
- OK now it’s a roman à clef
- Can’t find my face in the yearbook
- Minor changes to the ‘I can’t find my face’ section
- Diary entries and notes; public domain image of the tarot’s Tower
- Added more to the first diary entry
- Diary entry about the disappearance of Henry Lepin
- lambent
- First close encounter with the tower
- More diary entries: Rhéal ascends and descends the tower
- Added Olympics bit
- Added Unsplash photo; added snippet about the door’s sudden appearance
- Quick note so I don’t forget it
- After Rheal came back down…
- Added note about Oppositional Defiance Disorder
- Added some notes; edited the opening; introduced the tower a bit earlier
- Light edits
- Added text about why Mark kept a diary
- Mostly editing the first bits
- Started on the next diary entry
- Some minor edits
- Some edits, a new diary entry, a few updates to the notes
- Update: no explicit mentions of the tower in the diary entries proper
- Some notes for the editing phase
- Started on the climb of the tower
- Added a note (‘Coda’) about how the whole thing ends
- He’s climbing the stairs now
- Removed extra ‘chapter’ titles, minor edits, tongue-in-cheek title suggestion
Update, Dec. 19th: a month later, here’s the next batch of commit messages:
- He’s still climbing the stairs
- A bit more climbing
- idea for a website (later)
- Reaching the top
- Left a note about the massive storm — make sure it’s in the diary
- small edits, the view from the top
- A bit more at the top
- About to start the descent
- Jotted down a couple notes about ideas I had while washing dishes
- Running into Rhéal on the way down; [dates]
- Added TK to the date notes, for more easy regex search-and-replace later
- Typo fixes, added TK about an upcoming entry
- A ‘manse’ is for clergy; also added the year to the ‘modern’ date TKs
- Added red-brick texture; possible cover image
- More diary entries
- Possible title image
- Moved the giant images to an ignored folder, made a smaller JPG cover concept
- Fizzgig really doesn’t like the elementary school playground
- Very minor changes
- Cleared off a TK (what a lovely feeling)
- Rhéal stays over
- Punctuation changes
- Minor edits
- Notes on the coda; the new tower appears
- Ignore the wordcount file
- Christmas diary entry
- Started the Thanksgiving scene
- Renamed the school after Mme. Chirac
- Added a couple notes; linked to the post about The Dream
- The rest of the Thanksgiving visit
- [redacted]‘s fate
- The next morning
- Guilt over [redacted]‘s fate
- Corrected the spelling of L’Évêque