Nice! This should probably come further along in the essay, but I'd love to read more about the whole pre-professional atmostphere at Penn, and how that affects how people think about their post-collegiate lives. I do wonder, however, how excited they'd be to print that. I dunno. Either way, I can't wait to read the rest!

That's one of the many facets I'm considering including. The hardest thing is narrowing a decade or so of experience into a nice, focused essay of 1500 words or so. I'm probably going to leave out the depression I fell into (and only recently got over) after I moved to Seattle, because Too Many Changes at Once and How To Build a Social Circle From Scratch is a whole 'nother topic or three, even though it definitely delayed me making needed changes. Another issue I'm not sure if or how to handle is the fact the InterVarsity staffworkers my senior year encouraged people to consider taking AA-type jobs because our ministries were more important than our careers, and that way we'd have time and energy for them. I'm not sure that was bad advice for the handful who went on to become staffworkers or pastors or missionaries themselves, and for awhile I was trying to get onto that track. But I wasn't one of the Chosen Few the staff was hand-grooming to follow in their footsteps, so I wish I hadn't paid so much attention to their advice. Oh well.

It all comes under "Experience," and for the writer, under "Fodder."

I'm just giggling with a little bit of glee that as someone who gets the magazine to her house, I'll get to read it in its final version.

Assuming they accept it--this is one of those things where it seems more appropriate to submit the whole thing than to do a query.

Was a lot of that in second person? Doing that smoothly is a real feat.

I was GMing, and my particular RPG focused on not 'directing' the player, so no. That is to say, I could never have my background say 'You do this or see a grue'...I couldn't force their roleplay. I could just put in the details (and the grue, as applicable), and the player could choose whether the character noticed or not, and roleplay (and possibly get eaten) accordingly. Or hack, hack, slash, hack, whatever.

Perhaps it's best if I never go back to role-playing. I saw the phrase "Hack and Slash", and my Bitchy brain immediately said, "Hm, first the swordfight, then the sex, could be fun."

Hi, everyone. I've got a character who has to decide not to kill herself(cause if she goes through with it, the story will be too short and it will undermine my message, anyway.)I know, sort of from experience, that wanting to live can be sort of a gradual realization, but what would that first moment look like. She's young and single, no kids.

It can be something really, really stupid. Like "If I survive till my next birthday, I'll buy myself that trip to Spain."

It can be something really, really stupid. Like "If I survive till my next birthday, I'll buy myself that trip to Spain."

Something direct and mundane and concrete is good. Like, Anya's fruit punch scene in "The Body." "Shit, I'll never have peanut M&Ms again! Forget it!"