# Gratitude Letter

To Max Gladstone and Amal El-Mohtar,

I am endlessly grateful for the book *This Is How You Lose The Time War*, but also for you, yourselves.

*Time War* as a book is tied for the number one inspiration for writing (the other one is what *got* me writing in the first place, and touches on different feelings of awe). I could say that it was the book that got me to treat my writing as something serious. Something that I could enjoy. It is the book that put me where I am on my path as an author. It is the book that showed me the joy of diving into language willingly, of rolling around in great heaps of words, of reveling in the simple beauties of a well crafted sentence.

Beyond that, though, the both of you taught me that writing does not need to be some grand experience that leaves you stuck entirely in your head. It can be a conversation, a collaboration. It can leave you in tears for your characters as they hurt. It can make you love them. To build up such a world that they are presented both with problems and the opportunities for solutions to those problems is a thing of beauty, and, while I sometimes think that I will never be half the writer that you are, it is nonetheless important to have goals.

Writing follows a signal path. It flows from the pen (or keyboard) onto the page, using the author as a conduit, and from there, it travels out to the audience, who acts as a conduit to reshape and reclaim those ideas, such that they're returned to...to what? To some grand source? To that nebulous concept of collective subconsciousness? We do not know where these ideas come from, if it's mere cognizance or some greater, deeper source, but by virtue of that flow of ideas, new ideas continue to grow and spread.

Thank you for your words. Thank you for *Time War*. Thank you for unwittingly being such an inspiration for me that I thought, "Fuck it, I'm gonna get an MFA and hone this craft to the finest point I possibly can." Thank you for Red, for Blue, for the Agency, for Garden. Thank you for Red saying "My prose purples", an admittance of a dalliance, and then for letting her to continue on. Purples indeed.

Thank you,

Madison
