Lines of fiction and truth do blur (Zach)

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Lani had many interesting points and Zach was taking note of as many of them as he could. He wished he’d thought to record this conversation, so he wasn’t dependent on his chicken-scratch shorthand notes, but those and his memory were going to have to do for the moment. “Yeah….I’ll keep that in mind though.” It was only the first draft, after all. Zach might finish the story(if he ever got his muse back) by the time he graduated, but after that it was the much longer, more tedious process of editing. And after that, even if he found a publisher willing to look at it, they might send it back for more editing before they’d even publish it. There was no telling how long this was going to take. Zach didn’t know how some authors managed to come out with so many books in such a short timeframe. He wanted to be like that, one day.

Zach wasn’t sure how much this workshop had helped though. Yes, he’d produced something, but it was hardly something he could be proud of, though Lani’s feedback was still incredibly helpful and encouraging. It at least told him that the story idea he had was intriguing enough to catch someone’s interest, even if the writing was just very…..Zach would call it formulated. Anyone can write a good sentence when they knew how to turn it into a formula. It was one of his favorite exercises when he was still in primary school; sentence diagrams and construction. It made it easy to construct sentences, though not necessarily in a creative manner. That’s what he usually fell back on when his muse for writing was limited and uncooperative. Though recently, not even that much was working to help him produce anything satisfactory when it came to his job and novel. The workshop…he’d have to go back and edit this scene later…or maybe just scrap it altogether and start it from the beginning, especially if he thought he needed to change it a lot. It was a bit discouraging….

It couldn’t be helped though. Zach was just not on top of his game at the moment. He’d just told Lani that and it made him smile softly to hear the sympathetic words back from him. It was somewhat comforting to know he wasn’t the only one to whom that happened to. “Oh….at Greenview?” he asked, glancing slightly in the random direction that Lani had indicated, though he wasn’t quite sure that the community college was actually in that direction or not. “What are you studying there?” he asked casually. It was pretty standard to ask about such things, wasn’t it?

But the conversation was turned back onto Zach, which….Zach didn’t mind it, but it did make him feel a bit awkward, considering he was awkward to begin with and had been stumbling over his words just to answer simple questions over the past few minutes. “Um…yeah, I did.” Zach hadn’t gone to community college first, like a lot of young fresh-out-of-high-schoolers did. “I got in on a scholarship, though….now I’m just riding on student loans and pell grants…” Zach was disappointed in himself about that, because he wanted to be able to pay for as much as he could through grants and scholarships, but his scholarship only applied to his undergrad. Now he was banking on being able to land a job once he got his Master’s that would allow him to pay back his student loans in a timely pace. His parents positive financial situation made it even worse for him, unfortunately. He disliked having so much to think about when it came to his schooling. “It’s….they have some really good programs here. And some joint programs with Greenview…if you ever decided you wanted to transfer.” Zach always supported finishing college up with university and getting at least one’s Bachelor’s degree. He wondered if any of that was in Lani’s plans for his academic future?

[Lani Hunter]

The telekinetic wondered how many stories Zach had in the working, an English graduate student, Lani didn’t even really know what that meant. He wondered if he was working on some sort of thesis, probably, but Lani was curious about the topic. He wasn’t familiar with higher education, neither of his parents had gone farther than a bachelors and well he hated all of his cousins so no advice there. The whole thing whether it was English or math or science all seemed like a mystery to him. “Sure,” Lani commented, he’d said what he’d wanted and now it was up to Zach to take or leave his opinion. For all Lani knew, Zach was humoring him and wondering just what it was that made Lani think he had a good idea. The telekinetic merely shrugged, it wasn’t his business.

Lani looked toward the front of the room and snorted softly. Well, what a good workshop this was, their instructor was swiping through something on her phone. He leaned back and crossed his ankles in front of himself as he all but lay back in the chair. Super helpful, their instructor. Lani never thought of sentences and words as formulas. He had resented sentence diagrams in school and by the end of high school the words ‘sentence diagram’ would turn up and it didn’t even matter if it was his favorite, Dalton, he’d skip out on that. It was useless, he thought. He got stuck in the mechanics and wearied quickly of the sentences. Now math and physics equations, those Lani found beautiful. He could literally see the force balances in his head and it was so satisfying to look at something and not just appreciate it but know how it worked.

“Yeah,” Lani confirmed with a nod then flushed. “Well, uh…” he started sheepishly scratching his head, “I haven’t quite figured that out yet.” He gave a shrug and ducked his head, how pathetic he must seem, in his second year and still having not a clue what he wanted to do. One minute it was this the next it was that and sometimes he contemplated just saying ‘fuck it all’ and going back to stealing for a living. Not that that wasn’t how he sustained his income during school. Lani knew his parents were just glad he was going to school at all, but he could only see the disappointment over and over again on his father’s face, after he’d dropped this class or that one, or failed that one due to an attendance requirement. It wasn’t that he didn’t go to class, he just didn’t see the point of going when he didn’t need to, which consequently lead him to passing his science and math classes with flying colors and failing his history and English classes.

Lani nodded and smiled, “Nice.” It was sad how expensive school was, it was almost worth it to be a thief for all of the likelihood that he would make it through college without debt. And then those in the older generation complained how unproductive and frankly poor the new workforce was. “It’s not something you can avoid now,” Lani replied sadly. He was that his school didn’t care where the money was coming from, so long as it was coming. No one thought to wonder where a twenty year old with no job was able to make rent much less pay tuition. Lani nodded, relaxed but clearly paying attention to what Zach had to say. “Yeah?” He nodded his head and looked around the air. He didn’t belong here, he wasn’t an academic. “I didn’t realize there were joint programs. They say that if we get a passing score everything should transfer.” Lani’d been balking at the idea of transferring for a year now, he was close to getting an Associates in… something, but transferring was scary, he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with his life.

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Zach was sincere in accepting Lani’s opinion about his writing. He was sincere in accepting any sort of critique, actually. Critiques were how one got better, how one became aware of their flaws and weak points and their strengths. One couldn’t improve without adequate feedback. Which was an unfortunate thing when you got a professor who didn’t like to give feedback and simply gave you the grade if you did the assignment. Zach had gotten professors like that before. He’d gotten those who wrote more than what was necessary in their comments on his assignments. And then he’d gotten feedback from his classmates, much like in the manner that he’d received them in this workshop, from Lani. Those, he found, were the most beneficial, because they gathered the opinions of a wider range of people. Not everybody was going to like your work, and if you only ever got the opinion of one type of person, and they disliked it, then you’d never make any progress in your efforts to only please that one person.

That’s how Zach saw it. He was going to take some of what Lani said and some of it he was going to just make note of it.

Zach nodded. This seemed to be a really common thing these days. That is, young people getting into college without the slightest idea of what it is they wanted to do. And while that was okay, it was concerning to Zach because his own younger siblings were going to have to do that in the near future as well. But, well…. “Yeah, I understand…it’s tough figuring that stuff out, I think.” Zach never had a problem with it, of course. He’d know he wanted to be a writer since he was a kid. But his siblings were another story. Savvy, for one, had the bad habit of switching from one interest to the next(her tendency to do that was not reserved to just her interest in boys, mind you). He could only imagine how many times she might decide to change her major when she was finally in college. Because she was going to college. If Zach had anything to say about it. But college wasn’t for everybody. Devlin hadn’t gone, and he was doing just fine as a police officer. Zach smiled, hopefully supportively. “It’ll come to you, sometime. Just go at your own pace.” A suggestion he’d given to someone else recently who was having similar troubles.

It felt like Zach was bragging now, though. Yes, he was smart and motivated, knew what he wanted to do, and basically got a free ride to college because of it, but that made him feel like a hypocrite for what having just basically told Lani that it was okay to not know what or where he was going in academia. “No,” he agreed. “I’ll…hopefully I’ll do better once I finish my grad program. For now, though…I feel like a mooch.” Zach laughed softly, though he didn’t particularly think it was funny. “Yeah, there are. Not for a lot of programs, but….and you have to sort of go searching for them…but they’re there.” He laughed again and shook his head. “They say that….but you’d be surprised how many stories I’ve heard of students transferring in from community college only to find their credits didn’t transfer like they expected.” It was a sad, but true reality and one that brought about a lot of frustration from students trying to fight the registrars over inaccurate transcripts.

[Lani Hunter]

While Lani loved writing he’d never thought about actually doing it for a living. It wasn’t about money, he already had stealing and so money wasn’t really a matter, but it was the idea of people reading his stuff and hating that caused him to shy away from it. Lani had very little talent outside of theft and he didn’t want people to look at him and think that he was trying to be something he wasn’t supposed to be. At least with physics he didn’t have to fake it. He knew it because he could ‘see’ it in action. In fact as far as mechanics go he could probably tell a few more things about something from just watching it passively with his power. He had come to think of his power as a measure of sorts. Once he’d learned how to work it passively, which had been an amazing discovery, though it didn’t usually stay passive for long.

Lani nodded in agreement, he had no idea how people figured it out. Maybe they just got into something that they were good at and kept doing it because they could do it. Lani raised a brow and found himself smiling unexpectedly. That was the first time he’d heard someone say that and to be honest coming from someone who wasn’t so far out of college like a lot of professors and his relatives it was really nice to hear. “I hope so, I mean so far I kinda just like the classes, you know?” He said and wondered if his nerd was showing. The main reason he’d failed so many classes in high school and at Hammel was because he’d been required to go to class and to read the book and to do the homework, much of which didn’t interest him in the slightest. Taking classes that he wanted to made it that much more exciting and not necessarily having to go to class helped too.

Laughter pulled from Lani’s throat and he shook his head. “I doubt you’re a mooch. You’re here and you’re doing the work. Are you getting a Masters or a Ph.D?” He asked curious what a doctorate in English might entail. Probably a ton of writing. More writing than Lani ever wanted to do in his lifetime. “Huh, thanks Zach, I’ll look into that.” Lani nodded his head and made a mental note to look, it was news to him and he was kind of upset about that. He’d thought the community college was very adept in helping students expand their horizons or whatever their bullshit slogans were these days. Lani’s face fell and he hoped Zach was joking but he didn’t appear to be. “You’re kidding,” he said and shook his head with a little scoff, “They’re all out for money, that’s all it is anymore. Unless you’re lucky enough to be rich of skilled enough for a scholarship.” Lani was not going to transfer if it meant he had to take all of those gen eds again.

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It was a sentiment that Zach could understand, the fear of whether any of his work and ideas would be liked or completely rejected by the reading community, by critics, by basically anyone who bothered to read his work. Zach was nervous about it as well. Which was the reason why he liked getting feedback from many different people. Not everybody liked the same thing. Not everybody was going to like his work. And even if a majority of people disliked his work, there would still be some out there who still did, however small that group was. Zach wanted people to read his stuff. He wanted people to like it, of course, as well. But the reason why he wanted to be a writer was because he had ideas. He had stories and he wanted to share them. because they were interesting to him. One of his professors told him once, that if you, the writer, found your work interesting, then chances are, out of the 6 billion people on this earth, someone else would too. That brought the writer some comfort when it came to sharing his work…and when he’d posted some of his less refined stories online, the responses were sort of amazing, even though though pieces were hardly his best work. It was…encouraging.

Speaking of encouragement, Zach was pleased to see that he was providing Lani with some of that right now regarding his schooling, or at least that’s what it seemed like based on the other man’s smile. Zach nodded. “That’s good. I think just taking classes because they’re interesting is a good idea too.” It made one a lot more motivated to succeed in the class as well. “I…I honestly think it’s a shame that you have to be so…selective with your classes…because whatever degree you’re going for doesn’t give you that many electives…” And even then, some programs made you pick from a set list of electives. And then there were the classes that wouldn’t let you in if you weren’t part of a certain degree program…just because it was interesting wasn’t a good enough reason. Zach had thought many times that he’d like to take a class simply because it’d be interesting or would be good reference for his writing, but had run into that problem himself. It really was a shame.

“Um…a Masters,” he replied sheepishly, as if there was something wrong with getting a Masters in his field. It wasn’t exactly unusual…though Lani’s assumption was correct, there was a lot of writing. And reading. And researching. And evaluating. And presenting. Next year Zach was going to have to give a presentation on his thesis in front of a panel of his professors from the department. He wasn’t exactly looking forward to that. He felt bad about telling Lani something he didn’t really want to hear, even if it was true. Transferring credits from college to college and from university to university was a pain in the butt, he’d heard. There’d been a lot of his classmates who’d rant about it after a visit to the department advisor. “Yeah…” Zach didn’t disagree with that. College really was just a money making business these days. “And…I’m not sure if ‘skilled’ is the right word,” he said to Lani’s praise. “I just worked hard, I guess…I don’t know…” Yes, some of it came easy, but some of it didn’t still. And all that ‘hard work’ made him practically a recluse, hence his awkwardness in socializing. “There are lots of other things you can do to get ‘free money’ if you really need it.” What he learned during his search for scholarships was that there was pretty much a scholarship for anything you could think of. There were loads of people and organizations just itching to give away money to students, for one reason or another. It was kinda scary, actually…

[Lani Hunter]

The real testament to the bold was the ability to create without fear. To put their hearts on display and allow others to join them as the wind filled their wings and they took off into a new world. Lani had been pulled in by his own curiosity and he knew he would keep an eye out for Zach and his story. He hoped that Zach never gave up, especially since the world always needed more writers, the harder it got to publish the more dedicated authors had to be to their story. Lani didn’t think he could make it. He wrote for the enjoyment and he had always thought that if he enjoyed something that making it work would make it less appealing. It had happened with thievery. He loved it now, but when he’d been under the thumb of his boss he had had strict deadlines and restrictions. He hated it. Now that he was free he found joy in stealing again. Although that probably wasn’t the best thing for those who would be his prey.

He watched Zach with interest, he hadn’t spoken much to people about his desire to continue his education. “I do too,” Lani agreed with a bright smile, “It’s great just to get out and see all that there is to offer. And having access to the library isn’t all that bad either.” He chuckled. He was the kind of person who learned very well from a text book, he knew most people weren’t like that and he knew that it was a challenge for many to afford the texts. It was a great thing to have a library not only that held the required texts but to make books available to those that otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford it. Lani nodded in agreement, “I guess that’s why some people stay in school forever,” he said a light air of teasing in his voice, indicating that was exactly what graduate school was. “The worst I think is being shut out of classes because there are too many of us and not enough professors.” He added with a small nod of his head, he would very much like to take many classes but the need to get in for one credit was hard especially if the class was somehow reserved.

Nodding with approval, Lani missed the look of uncertainty on Zach’s part. Lani thought it was great that he was doing it at all. He watched Zach as he spoke and nodded along thoughtfully. “Skilled or not, it is good to see hard work paying off. Too many times people who work the hardest are the people who get screwed.” Lani’d seen it time and time again on the streets of Boston, and while the streets of Pilot Ridge were cleaner they were not without their vagabonds. “And then you have people who are just declaring that they made it on their own so everyone else has to and the people who suffer are the ones that need the most help,” Lani continued on his rant. It was why he targeted the people he did. It was never those that couldn’t afford it, and when he could it was the people who deserved it. Swindling and stealing within the law, well if the law couldn’t do anything Lani would deal them the justice of the underbelly. He raised a brow at Zach wondering what he was talking about. “There’s no such things as free money, Zach,” the thief said his tone serious. It was ‘free money’ that had healed his sister, but it was also the same ‘free money’ that had imprisoned Lani.