I haven’t finished a work of fiction since March. I haven’t finished a work of fiction longer than a short story since last September.

That’s almost a year.

Now, before you take away my library card, hear me out. I HAVE been reading books. But I’ve also been starting a new job and learning to live with TWO kids and fixing a basement and discovering streaming Netflix and playing with new technology and doing all sort of other distracting things.

I’ve read books about basketball and about information architecture and about HTML5. I’ve read two collections of short stories from my McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern subscription. I’ve read about music and I’ve read about content strategy and I’ve read about writing itself.

But no real fiction. Nothing longer than a couple dozen pages.

The excuses, the excuses.

The truth is, I was exhausted with fiction. Though I missed it, I couldn’t get back into it. I forced the matter, I took it up with our library, and I wandered home wondering how I’d just checked out a John Steinbeck novella; primarily, wondering if I’d ever even open it, if I’d ever care again.

Of course I’d care. Because reading and literature are as much a part of my personality as try-too-hard sarcasm; my upbringing was framed by bookshelves, my preferences dictated by others’ words. And everything I loved about books peaked over two year’s worth of Steinbeck – I read The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden and Tortilla Flat and Travels With Charley and fell in love with Salinas and Steinbeck and everything he stood for: great literature, themes and message that struck at the heart of human emotion.

The Red Pony, a novella from the early days of Steinbeck’s canon, fits under all three categories – great literature, great themes and a great message; a quick overview of the life cycle as viewed through the eyes of a young farm boy.

But, let’s be honest – I could gush about Steinbeck for hours, using as many fancy words as I could think of, filling my sentences with adjectives until they buckled under the strain. I won’t – you’re welcome – except to say The Red Pony, unlike Tortilla Flat and The Pearl (which are admittedly superior works) captures Steinbeck’s tendency toward realism and human suffering better than any of his other short works.

There is nothing complex about it. There’s a boy, a horse, and a family. There are two father figures who occupy the spectrum of understanding and tolerance. There’s the discovery of human fallacy, the reality of growing old, and the sacrifices of birth, all contributing to the slow coming of age of young Jody, a boy who really just wants a horse of his own.

Children do not come of age at once. Sure, Holden Caulfield immersed himself into the city and learned how to live as quickly as possible, but most children are exposed to life’s realities incrementally, coming to terms with death and life and the very existence of mortality not in one fell swoop, but through a series of occurrences. Sometimes they take a decade to unfold. Often, it’s even longer.

You could argue that, in this case, many of us are still struggling to come of age. We never really know if Jody reaches a solid point of understanding – like a short story, The Red Pony drops in and pulls out somewhere in the middle of the complete narrative – but we do know that he’s made progress, simply by the hints and symbols he leaves behind as we read.

That’s Steinbeck’s ultimate charm, I believe – this ability to tell a story through clues. Not through mystery, but through human nature; holding his cards to his chest, revealing only enough to win, throwing the rest away.

The Red Pony is fantastic. Coming from a Steinbeck fanatic, you probably shouldn’t expect anything less from me.

I guess that means I’m ready to start reading again.

No. On second thought. Let’s not. Because this isn’t letting go in the traditional sense.

This is simply me, writing a note to my little girl, sticking it in her backpack and watching as she toddles up the steps to her first day of preschool.

And this is her, at ease and excited, taking in the situation and accepting her role as a child who’s ready to learn. To learn differently, without the eager eyes of her parents looming over; instead, with the freedom of individuality.

And this is us. Realizing that it all moves so fast. That cliches are true. And that while we’re not letting go, we are beginning to ease up on the reins.

That, though she can’t yet read it, she’s been given the go ahead.

“Sierra -
Enjoy this – your first day of school.
You are going to have a great time.
I am already so proud of you.
Love, Daddy.”

I can’t wait to hear how it turns out. Every single day of it. I can’t wait.

And until the end of each of those days, I’ll learn to slowly let go, a little at a time.

Such is the process that goes on in our minds: creative momentum, fueled by the peaks, stalled by the valleys.

It isn’t enough to wait it out. Waiting out creative momentum as it’s floundering at the bottom of a hill is to do it a disservice; to assume that things will pick up again, that all you need to do is wait.

It still takes work. But it also takes patience.

As I move from project to project, I believe more in the idea that mastery of creative momentum is one of the most important things a creative-minded person can learn.

Whether you’re designing Web sites or writing novels or cooking or reading or whatever, if you can give your mind the push that gets it going back up the peak toward maximum inspiration, and if you can recognize the moment when you’re at your best and take advantage of your brain’s open channel ways, you will be both more productive and better at ease.

It’s a cycle. And while controlling the cycle is impossible, recognizing its benefits is crucial.

More than that, it took the happy shrieks of a puddle-jumping toddler. A preschooler, nearly; her ladybug raincoat dripping with rain, her snow boots soaked.

I viewed the incoming storm as an adult, fighting to keep settled, cycling through grown-up problems – home repair and career jitters and the constant march of time – while Sierra took the rain as a blessing.

Simplicity as dictated by an overeager three-year-old.

She didn’t give a damn about the 9-to-5 or per-square-yard carpet costs. She didn’t realize the rain was pouring down hard enough to give her daddy a stress headache.

She cared that there were puddles. And that she had a reason to put on her raincoat. And that, while only minutes ago she had been sad that the sun had gone away, she now had an opportunity to rid the evening of the weight of adult seriousness.

I was powerless to resist. So I obliged.

Good thing, too. It’s amazing what a little bundle of sunshine can do as it splashes through the rain.

(Great. Go ahead and guess where she learned THAT phrase. One hint: IT WAS ME.

I’m probably too early for the Father of the Year award, right?)

Which is why, when you go into any health care or training facility, you’re going to find posters on the wall. Anatomy posters and “how the body works” posters; images that belong in high school biology classrooms and undergrad medical seminars – anything to add a bit of color, to “warm the place up,” grabbed haphazardly from the stacks of promotional materials doctors get on a constant basis.

Which is all well and good. Sometimes, the posters are interesting.

It’s always my fear, though, that one of these days, in the midst of an intense check-up, as we’re considering some serious condition, the doctor will stop, think for a minute, and stand up.

“Hold on. I need to check something quick.”

And he’ll walk over to one of these charts, look at it thoughtfully, and say, “Ah ha!”

“Yes. There it is!”

Smiling, he’ll return to our checkup. “No wonder I couldn’t figure it out. I was looking at the wrong muscle!”

That’s probably the point at which I’ll start sweating.

The Web. It’s dead.

Let’s review.

Chivalry is dead. The Queen is dead. Microsoft Kin is dead. Duke Nukem Forever is dead. Michael Jackson is dead. Bill Cosby is dead.

Print is dead. The 30-second spot is dead. Blogs are dead. The record industry is dead (though, surprisingly, analog and vinyl are not). Sitcoms are dead.

Paul is dead.

God is dead.

And now the Web.

We’ll look beyond the argument that, while stand-alone apps and smartphones are rising in popularity, the simple fact is that most apps still depend on Web content and a not-so-small degree of Web promotion to become successful. We’ll also look past the example, which positions a tech-savvy media consumer lucky enough to own an iPad as some kind of technological standard, as if a vast majority of people are suddenly rising to the upper income brackets, running around and buying Apple products and downloading apps as if their status depended upon it.

Instead, we’ll just bask in the cheap journalistic practice of stating [SOMETHING] IS DEAD!, a surefire way to deliver easy traffic, draw considerable ire, and make baseless predictions using flawed data and a minor timeframe.

Because, in the eyes of the claimants, who are we to question?

These headlines are cheap. And so are the stories. The only solace we have is that, five years from now, we’ll be able to look back at this article and laugh at its misguided bluster. That is, if we even remember it – the hidden strength behind these boisterous obituaries is that, five years from now, no one will ever remember.

Listen, Wired may have a point.

But a point isn’t enough to lay claim to predicting a medium’s demise. (One they’ve admittedly already made, 13 years earlier.)

It is, however, enough to throw a hail mary article into the abyss of the magazine industry’s dwindling readers – of which I’m one – in a desperate attempt to regain a little relevancy.

Journalism is dead. Long live journalism.

There’s an underlying belief throughout the non-tech-savvy that computer and Web programmers are a secluded, arrogant group; fiercely loyal to their language, looking out for themselves, unable to share their findings lest they make themselves obsolete. It’s this belief that leads us to stop trusting our company’s IT department and automatically mistrust the kid Web developer signed on to work our church Web sites.

It’s not necessarily true.

In my experience, Web developers aren’t maniacally protective of their knowledge, but simply frustrated that no one else is bothering to commiserate. When you show up with the ultimate in ignorance – like asking a CSS expert to help you get rid of spyware, or expecting a .Net developer to automatically help you purchase a digital SLR camera – you’re not facing arrogance.

You’re facing exhaustion. That expert? He or she is simply tired of being misunderstood.

If there’s one thing I’ve discovered over the past two months in Web development, it’s that Web developers want to talk about Web development. They want to share their secrets, often to the point that your eyes glaze over.

Ask a pointed question, though, and you’ll discover something even greater: the Web developer’s desire to spread knowledge. Which brings us to A List Apart’s first publication, HTML5 for Web Designers – a short and easy to digest primer on the changes being made through HTML’s newest iteration.

As a Web guy whose exposure to HTML and CSS has come exclusively from the routine hacking of free WordPress templates, HTML5 for Web Designers dives into the subject at my level – highlighting the changes and features of code that could change how the Web is organized and developed. Even better, it does so in a way that’s akin to the “spreading the gospel” model of Web talk – 100% devoted to letting the reader understand the code.

Don’t get me wrong – it’s not going to make my mom understand Web development.

That being understood, it’s a wonderful look inside the mind of a development evangelist; Keith’s knowledge takes a 900-page slog of a standards guide and boils it down to the 80-some pages you’ll actually need to read.

Because, you see, developers don’t aim to make people feel dumb. At least, not as long as we’re willing to listen and make a concerted effort to understand.

It’s our inability to grasp the nuances of technology that’ll take care of that for us.

• Play-doh
• Crayola
• Fisher-Price
• MB Games

Outside of Crayola, I’d have spelled every one of these wrong. The last is the most surprising to me. Not Milton Bradley, which was a staple of my childhood, but MB Games. Flip the box over, and you’ll see a link to Hasbro.com. A quick Wikipedia search confirms that Milton Bradley was taken over by Hasbro.

In 1984.

My peanut butter is in my chocolate and all of that, right?

In other spelling foibles, Fisher-Price has a hyphen. I had no idea. Also, I swore Play-doh was spelled without the “y.” Funny – I’m convinced it’s spelled EVEN MORE wrong than it actually is.

This is all without mentioning the brand-less watercolors I wiped up yesterday.

In a vacuum, with no one forcing me to adjust for defense or change my direction, I am a scrappy hitter. I am a freaky consistent jump shooter. I am a Gold Glove defender.

I am Ichiro Suzuki. I am Oscar Robertson. I am Ozzie Smith.

My swing is true. I don’t hit home runs, but I do the little things that win games, despite the fact that I’m not actually playing games, relying only on a glorified batting practice to show off my amazingly consistent wares. My flow is sweet, my follow-through fluid, my confidence at its high; every shot snaps the bottom of the net, every juke and every fake – each one as fake as its name – unstoppable, every twist and turn like a gibbon effortlessly climbing a zoo cage.

Of course, I know the truth. I know what happened the last time I played one-on-one, the “one” itself betraying the number of points I was able to score in two combined games. I know what happened the first three times I saw a slow pitch softball this summer, how the breeze off my bat kept the outfielders cool, how even the mosquitoes kept away from me lest I miss the ball and knock them into the back fence.

It’s such childish bull, really. We’re supposed to grow out of it, right? We’re supposed to understand our place and buck up and admit that we’re not made for sports and that we’d do a lot better if we just stopped playing and started worrying about Brett Favre or some other tabloid sports crap.

That’s not how it is, though. Not for me. Not for any sports fan, regardless of talent.

We all want to imagine that we’re the best. Even if we know, without a doubt, that we have no chance in making it that far.

I don’t play sports to win. I play them to dream. To have fun. To taunt my friends. To imagine that I’m actually on a real field. That I’m actually a real athlete.

Because, on my own, with all of the quirks that come with a home court, or with the guiding hand of a friendly pitcher, I can pretend that the talent is real.

Without defense, I am All World. There is no greater player. No one can match the effort and skill and talent of the sports star I become. In my mind.