What’s Witchfire About?

Picture of Witchfire created by me using Baldur’s Gate 3 character creator

I’ve gotten some mild interest here and elsewhere about the planned reboot of my Witchfire series. With that in mind, I thought I’d fill newer readers in on what the series is about.

In The Beginning…

I started the original Witchfire series (NSFW link to my new self-hosted blog’s adult section) about three and a half years ago. The idea came about as I was looking for some writing inspiration and made one of my occasional visits to Danger Babe Central. DBC is a superheroine peril website. Much milder than some other sites out there, but the heroines are rarely portrayed as competent, and always end up defeated and in “adult” situations. The site’s owner, “Mr. X”, also hosts a fan fiction page where readers can submit written stories and get them posted.

To be blunt, the fan page content runs the gamut of boys living out some pretty dark and twisted fantasies to a few authors trying to portray the heroines in a more positive light while keeping things sexy. LONG story short, there were just enough stories where the heroines were portrayed as capable and having some depth (both on the main site and fan page) that I thought “I could put a more positive spin of my own on this also”.

And So It Began:

So I set to work on my idea. I wanted a unique premise for my storyline, and I came up with the idea of a redhead Wiccan named Krystal who was a fan of the site, but had an objectified view of the heroines. She had also been otherwise drifting off the path with her Wicca, and as a result, her goddess (Freya from Norse legend) banished her to Danger Babe Central’s story world to teach her humility and compassion for her fellow women.

Krystal finds her magic works in this new comic book reality, and makes quick work of her first villain based on her knowledge of the tropes used at the website. Just as quickly, she found out life is pretty complicated in such a world though, and had trouble from heroines and villains alike as she attempted to uncover whatever big conspiracy was going on, and hopefully earn her way back home.

Crash and Burn:

Lack of planning, along with trying to keep up with another writer whom I was collaborating with, and mostly an epic amount of drama in my personal life led to my being increasingly unhappy with what I’d written, and less able to come up with new content. I finally shelved the whole storyline after 11 chapters. That was roughly two and a half years ago.

Regrouping

The desire to finish what I started was always there. I’ve kicked around various ideas to do just that for a while. It wasn’t until things really started to clear up a over the last 4 or 5 months that I really felt my focus had returned enough to start anew.

Looking over the original story, I took notes of the things that I hated, such as how Krystal was too much of a bitch, and that the grand conspiracy didn’t seem to have the right kind of foreshadowing and clue reveals. That last part made the story line feel inconsistent and awkward. I’d also partially fallen into the trap of making the original heroines less competent than originally intended.

Witchfire Redux:

Reviewing everything, I decided that a fresh start was the best option. Calling the new series “Witchfire Redux” came to me surprisingly fast. Here’s what’s changed:

First, I decided that Krystal needed to be a little wiser and more mature. Instead of an oversexed 21 year old college junior at UC San Diego, she’s now 23 and pursuing the beginnings of her post graduate work at the college. Her field of study is Criminal Profiling and Forensic Psychology, primarily because human behavior in general is fascinating to me. It also allows a bit more of a suspense and detective angle to come into play in the new story.

Krystal is still a redhead, with all the stereotypes that come with that, including a highly passionate nature. She’s no longer a spoiled brat though. She’s still a Wiccan also, which will again be the source of her powers.

The BIG shift ended up being more to do with the original characters from Danger Babe Central. I re-read every story I could find and took note of everything that could help me uniquely define each character; interests, appearance notes, how they fight… you name it. Everything from social life to their kinks ended up on the spreadsheet I mentioned in a previous post here.

I also made note of past locations used in stories, so that I could keep canon somewhat consistent, then I filled in the details for Delta City (where the vast majority of stories are set). Six city zones (NSFW blog link) with key landmarks and points of interest both from the canon stories and others added by me to flesh the city out. A massive project, BUT I’ll have everything available at a glance so I know what could or would happen where.

I did the same with organizations and factions for my story. I even put in some thought as to how the laws in that world (again NSFW blog section link) might vary from ours.

OK, but What About the Actual Plot?

Alright fine… Here’s some plot info. 😀

The story will start out similar to the original. This time though, Krystal will be haunted by very erotic but equally dark dreams. She will get called before Freya again. Freya will explain that there’s something sinister going on in the multiverse and it’s centered in Delta City. Krystal needs to go there and oppose it. Still a fan of Danger Babe Central, Krystal will initially balk, not wanting to end up like the heroines always do. Freya will tell her that she’s pulled the same move that Doctor Strange did before turning over his Infinity Stone to Thanos; after scanning all the possibilities, Krystal is the best option for preventing this darkness from spreading. If she doesn’t, the darkness will continue to haunt her in “The Real World” and eventually find it’s way fully there.

So Krystal reluctantly agrees to play the heroine. When she gets there, things are problematic right from the get go. As the story progresses, she and the other heroines slowly uncover a wide ranging conspiracy between governments and a shady collection of high tech businesses to decipher and control the unique genetic mutation that gives the Danger Babe Central heroines their powers and abilities. The conspiracy’s goal will be to create an army of metahumans that are completely under their control.

There will be a good deal more to it than that, BUT I can’t give away too much. Others might steal it, and there’s less cause to read if you know it all. I promise lots of subplots as well however.

All this coming soon to the other blog.

As a Side Note: The links to the Delta City notes, and the blog page on laws both link to pages that are themselves work safe, BUT they are in the NSFW partition of the “self hosted” blog. Don’t wander off of those two pages and you’re fine. Beyond that, you were warned. 😉

When Does a Review Reveal Too Much?

A simple question, but one I’ve been pondering the last few weeks. In the case of any sort of work of fiction, I think the answer is pretty straight forward: If it crosses into the realm of a “spoiler”, thus ruining the ability to enjoy the story, it’s revealed too much.

But what about non-fiction, more specifically “how-to” works?

I’ve been pondering this because I’ve spent a fair amount of time the last month or so going over various media on how to improve one’s writing and storytelling. I thought it would be nice to share what I’ve learned, but at the same time, I wonder how much might be too much… Where is the line between a good, truly in-depth review and making it so the reader never wants or needs to go get the book or whatever for themself?

For example, one of the sources I looked at was from MasterClass.com. “Dan Brown teaches Writing Thrillers” was loaded with amazing information on general story structure, character creation, and several ways to build suspense and tension in a story.

I think I have 10 to 12 handwritten pages of notes in rough outline form, which would probably result in 3 or 4 pages of outline in a program like Word. For those not familiar with MasterClass, that’s from about 3 hours worth of lecture time (broken down into roughly 15 minute video segments). MasterClass.com has courses that are more like a TED Talk. Somebody like Dan Brown or James Patterson gets up and gives you a few hours of everything they believe has made them successful. “The Great Courses”, by comparison are taught by University academics and anywhere from 20 to 40 hours long. More akin to a college class.

Is there more that could be gotten out of that Dan Brown video “series”? Most likely, but I think my notes are a solid representation of the overall course. But how much is overshare though… where I’m morally, if not factually, cutting into Dan Brown’s income from the course?

Dan’s a good test case for this whole concept I’m struggling with. He has a very factual, academic approach to his teaching in the class. Neil Gaiman, on the other hand, would be much more difficult for me to do anything resembling an “infodump” on. Like his actual storytelling, HIS MasterClass contains a good deal of info wrapped up in allegory to help solidify the lessons.

While I worry about inadvertently cutting into others’ sales, I want to do these reviews because there is enough “how to write” garbage out there to completely fill the interior of the Death Star. Most of it is written by people who have had the smallest level of success as writers, yet feel that somehow makes them expert enough to put 40 books on Amazon or several videos on Udemy about how to write. The good stuff deserves to be recognized as such in my opinion.

Four Years…

Yep, 4 ‘Glorious’ Years…

This was actually about a week ago. Things have just been a mess here, and I didn’t get around to this sooner.

It’s hard to believe I’ve actually been here this long, and how little I feel I’ve accomplished beyond dealing with a never ending, ever escalating series of disasters that keep me from doing any real writing.

So, M$ Outlook Actually Taught Me Something Yesterday

I was in the middle of an email with my uber small writing circle, and misspelled “Epilogue”. The spellchecker in Outlook automatically throws up suggestions before you can even do a correct yourself, and “Apologue” came up as a suggestion.

I’d never heard of the word, so I had to search it out of morbid curiosity:

So yes, an allegory or parable. The word is obscure enough nowadays that I’m not certain if I’d use it in writing… Perhaps if a character was fairly erudite and known for their vocabulary.

Still nice to learn something new however. 🙂

FINALLY!!! Scrivener 3 for Windows!

As I’m starting to gear up for more writing, I decided to check yet again to see if the oft promised and never released Scrivener 3 was released for Windows.

IT’S HERE!!!

Not only that, they even kept their word and gave me my upgrade from 1.x for free!

I have to be honest, at this point I’ve just downloaded it and am beginning to work through the tutorial. The only thing new that I’ve seen thus far is the ability to easily insert pictures and videos into your project. I’m not even sure if the videos have to be linked via YouTube or something similar.

Some stuff, as noted in the description I… borrowed from the Scrivener home page has been moved around and “cleaned up”. I’ll see if this ends up to be better organized or not. At this VERY early hour, the two things that I can report are:

1. That gawdawful, clunky Windows 95 era interface is FINALLY gone
2. The new version is 64 bit, so it’s a good deal more responsive.

I suspect my previous review will hold true that you can do anything with Office that Scrivener can do. It’s just a question of IF Scrivener has finally made it easier and cleaner to do it with them; one tool instead of 3 or 4.

If you own a copy of 1.x you’re eligible for either a free upgrade or half off depending upon when you bought it, so check it out:

Scrivener for Windows home page at Literature and Latte

Beyond that, I’ll report back in a day or two how things have been going for me.

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

Before anybody panics, I’m taking the words literally, NOT metaphorically as Hamlet did. 🙂

image from thetalko.com

I’ve been meaning to get back to writing here for over a week, but lack of sleep… or quality sleep rather, was doing a number on me. I didn’t realize how bad the problem was, or how much it was contributing to my brain fog until our Sleep Number bed broke for the second time in a few months.

The air pressure was unstable on my side of the bed, resulting in it going from too firm to too soft and back multiple times a night. I’m going to do a separate post detailing the workings of a Sleep Number bed, and why they’re a bad buy in my opinion. For the moment, suffice it to say we got fed up and went shopping for a new bed over the Fourth of July weekend. Yay for sales that commercialize and monetize a holiday celebrating freedom. Sarcasm duly noted, I hope.

We tried different manufacturers and models, and ALL of them felt better than our old bed, which convinced us we were making the right choice to replace vs repair. We decided on a Purple brand Model 4 mattress, with Tempurpedic coming in a close second. The Purple brand had better lower back support, although the Tempurpedic with the new cooling technology was a bit cooler (I sleep HOT).

Purple 4 mattress deconstructed. Image from Sleepsherpa.com

We got the new bed yesterday afternoon, and last night was probably the best night’s sleep I’ve had in YEARS, if not my life. I’m not ready to outright endorse the mattress YET. It’s expensive, and I want to see how it’s going to do over time. I’ll keep reporting on it occasionally however.

Quality, REM sleep time was off the charts for me though, and I awakened feeling mentally and physically recharged. I expect to be doing a good deal more writing in immediate future if I keep getting this level of rest. 🙂

Those of you who think that you’re managing some sort of life hack by cheating yourself on sleep, especially quality REM sleep… You’d be amazed how much better you feel with REAL sleep. A saw has to be sharpened regularly to work at it’s best (as Stephen Covey liked to point out). Your mind and body are exactly the same in that regard.

Sito Privato

OK, time for a “Things that Make You Go Hmmm” post…

Now for those who don’t speak Italian or can’t guess based on the phrase’s similarity to English, the title means Private Site. I bring it up because there’s a blog I follow that’s in Italy, and the gal who runs it has a bad habit of locking most of her followers out of some of her posts. Since just about all of her posts are romantic poetry, thoughts and songs, I assume she’s younger. I likewise assume that given the rest of her posts are about romance and sensuality that the private posts are also.

Every time I hit that private site screen, I can’t help but wonder what’s being posted that she feels the need to keep it hidden from most people.

With that in mind, I wanted to offer some advice to the young women out there: NOTHING, and I mean ABSOLUTELY NOTHING on the internet is private. No matter what you do, there are people with ways around it. Anything from outright hackers to sites that index (and clone) other sites, to “social engineering” and a dozen other possibilities.

Keeping it simple, the aspect of social engineering that we’re talking about here is that whole thing your parents or friends hopefully warned you about with not sharing racy pictures of yourself with somebody you have a crush on. They’ll share with one friend, no matter what they promise, and then it gets passed around more and more until suddenly everybody in the neighborhood, at school and / or at work knows what your bare boobs look like.

My point is this; if your piece of erotica or sensual poetry is that sexual, or you don’t feel comfortable sharing that pic (nude or not), putting it behind a “private” page or site is really NO protection at all. You have two realistic choices here:

DON’T DO IT. Use discretion and common sense levels of caution and don’t post that written material or picture. You’re very likely saving yourself a good deal of drama later on down the road. Won’t happen to you? That’s what EVERY girl that ended up with nude pictures passed around school, or the star of a revenge porn video on the internet said. None of them set out to be publicly humiliated.

The other option is to accept it’s VERY likely going to happen to you also at some point. Webpage passwords are minimal protection. They might be better than just “owning it” and putting it out on display for everybody but the end result is probably going to be the same. That pic, video or story could resurface at the worst possible time too.

Hypocritical, given that I write erotica? Superficially, BUT I’m only warning you of the likely fallout. I’m also careful to disclose minimal personal information and NO pictures of myself. I’d do follow those last two steps regardless. The world has too many weird people in it.

Use wisely your power of choice.

Frustrations

Frustrations have once again kept me from doing any posting here.

First, let me get my warning out of the way; RANT ahead!

At first, I thought it was annoyance over cutting ties with the person I used to collaborate with on my Witchfire stories. Well, sort of collaborate. We tried to create a shared world with some crossovers for our stories. That ended over their insistence upon demonizing anyone they disagreed with politically or socially, and me saying one time too often to look at other POVs and not stereotype entire groups just because a media talking head and their sheeple said so.

So many of the problems in society today are caused by people on BOTH sides of various issues having blinders on like that. Sadly most of them are otherwise decent people. They just can’t be bothered to work past their personal biases. Too easy to hate because somebody told them that their personal problems are the fault of that group over there. Old trick though; it’s worked for Hitler, groups like the Proud Boys, and the FAR Left as well. “Hate! Fear! Follow me blindly! I’ll lead you to salvation”.

95% of the time these would-be saviors are only exploiting people for their own selfish ends by playing off one group against another.

Need I say it AGAIN?!? Judge people as INDIVIDUALS instead of using group-think and blindly applying labels that promote conflict and division.

AND THEN THERE WAS THE BLOG…

First, let me say I hate some of the new changes to WordPress. Even using a spacer insert is harder now since there’s no box, just a little circle now that you move up and down. The (picture) cropping and resize tool doesn’t work for me. They’ve even done away with the ability to select specific font size from a drop down. Now it has to be keyed in if you want to change it. Every “improvement” to the block editor seems to make it a bigger mess.

Some sort of background changes have me locked out of replying to or even liking half the blogs I follow AGAIN. This is the third or fourth time it’s happened since I started here. If I haven’t liked or commented in your blog in a while and I usually do, that’s very likely why. This change no doubt so WP can data mine blogs more easily.

Then we get back to PEOPLE as relates to blogging…

First, there’s my ongoing gripe over USERS masquerading as followers. If you’re doing THIS, you’re not reading and you don’t care about anything anyone else has to write about:

Doing that regularly just says you’re only using people to gain followers and pad your fragile ego. It’s happening increasingly from people who I’ve made effort to genuinely interact with on WP too, or at least used to. And I’m talking them doing 20+ likes in 1 or 2 minutes. I have a few pics of THAT also. I figured 8 likes was enough to make the point though.

If you don’t have time to read and have no desire to do so, just don’t reply instead of using people for your vanity. I’d rather have 5 followers like Refarmer, Joanne the Geek, Sheree, BigSkyBuckeye and a few others who will actually read, than have 10,000 fraud followers.

Then there’s another issue that’s been simmering for a long time also; appeasement and self censorship. I left and loudly denounced Twitter for similar experiences, but really WP isn’t all that different in a few regards. I speak out against some of the heavy handed aspects of the SJW movement (even though I support the overall movement / idea), then I’m evil. I have to push anything spiritual over to another blog because I might offend religious people. Can’t believe in chi and God after all *rolleyes*

Same idea with some of my adult writing. I sort of give that one a partial pass as I don’t want people to have to worry about anything vaguely NSFW here, and WP is absolutely one of the worst sites out there for providing any sort of age check tool for that kind of content. Even just an “Are you 18?” button pop-up would be nice!

Maybe NextDoor.com is a better overall comparison. Can’t write anything there other than garage sales and recipes without offending somebody. I’ve felt increasingly the same way here.

Write about self-defense or martial arts, you’re violent.

Talk about RESPONSIBLE gun ownership (and I have a very negative opinion of some gun owners), and you’re going to go out and do a mass shooting.

OK, enough said. The point is I’m sick to freaking death of judgy fucks presuming they know what others are thinking and feeling, AND that said judging fucks have the imagined godlike wisdom to tell others with absolute certainty how to live their lives or even what they should say. Yes, I’m sick of the “this means you’re a that and need to change NOW” crowd.

I’m NOT advocating people be allowed nor encouraged to run around acting like asses with no filter either. Can’t we find a happy medium though?

Truth; I’m frustrated at feeling like I can’t be me. I’m shutting away and compartmentalizing pieces of me to try to appease people who are never going to read my writing or buy any book I write anyway.

I’m not sure how quick I’m going to really get back to posting “full time” here again. I do know that when I start though, I’m going to be more ME. Politics I will still refuse to cover. The waters there are just too muddied, the real truth too hard to find and I think everyone is corrupt. Adult content is staying at SilksErotica.

Anything else is one the table though. I’ll do my best to discuss topics in an intelligent, calm manner. I’ll try to be positive and upbeat too. Trust me, I’m sick of bitchy posts here

Don’t like a particular subject in the future? I’ll make sure the headlines are clear so you can bypass it. That, and a return to days having regular topics, are as good as you’ll get.

What Writers Can Learn From Comic Books

Payoff for something hinted at a couple days ago. 🙂

Some of my readers may still think of comic books as a kid’s media.  Reality is, that started going away in the 60s.  They deal with all kinds of social issues and topics that would be considered more mature.  They just also do it in a grandiose setting much like ancient myths.  I’ve read them for decades, and I’ve seen the good and bad in the work.  I believe there are multiple lessons for other writers to take away from them as well.  So, here we go:

1. Begin with the end in mind: I know about half the writers out there at least partially fly by the seat of their pants.  That’s OK, BUT, know the direction you’re heading.  If you have an outline (mental or written) of how that final chapter is going to go, you will have an easier time getting your characters to that point.  For better or worse, this is one thing the comic companies are good at doing.  We have a 12 issue story arc that will end with X being defeated this way.

 

2. Think About the Long Term Implications of the Story’s Events: This is mainly for authors writing sequels.  You never know when that one shot story or novel will inspire you to write more however.  You may have fans push for a sequel also.  This is something the comic companies have done very poorly since the 80s, hence all the reboots.  Actions have consequences, even in good fiction.  Destruction will cause public insecurity and backlash.  Captured doomsday devices are potentially going to end up in wrong hands again, etc…

My favorite example here it Geoff Johns unleashing a whole rainbow of different Lantern rings on the DC Universe.  It was pretty clearly, “oh this is cool, let’s take it a step farther” thinking with no thought for the impact on the story universe.  So we went from Sinestro having a yellow ring, to him recruiting an army of yellow ringed psychos terrorizing the universe with the yellow rings.  Then there were Red Rings based on rage, then came Blue rings based on hope, and Violet rings based on passion (not love), Indigo rings based on Compassion, an Orange Ring based on greed, White Rings based on Life, and Black Rings based on Death that reanimated dead characters as zombie black lanterns…  By the time all was said and done, DC had the universe overflowing with various lanterns running amok.  They had to go back and destroy most of the rings to restore some semblance of balance to the story universe.  Recently, not having learned, they started doubling down and introduced non-visible light spectrum rings for hidden emotions like shame.

Learn from this.  It doesn’t matter if it’s a spy story and the bad guy discovers our secret agent’s real name and that they have a family.  There’s long term implications there of the bad guy repeatedly coming after the family, and selling the information to other villains so they can do the same.  It’s OK to do that, just have a plan on how to handle it long term, like the family being relocated with new identities.

 

3 Every Character Should Have A Purpose:  The comic companies have gotten big the last decade or so on throwing out new characters in the hopes of appealing to new readers.  On the surface, that may seem logical.  It’s really trying to side step the fact that the story telling is suffering.  It’s treating a symptom, not the cause.  The characters are frequently introduced with little though and poor or no backstories also.

Principle characters should have a decent backstory to define their motivations and goals.  It can be as simple as the heroine works with the hero because they’re childhood friends and she has a secret crush.  It’s a reason for them to be there, then all you need is what skills, observations, connections, etc… do they add to the story, and how those will come into play in the story.

Even minor or cameo character should have a reason for being there.  The co-worker passed in the hall tells the protagonist about an event, etc…  If they’re just there to show the office has a staff, they’re not needed in the story.

Note that major characters / the protagonist should have as much depth as possible also.  Stan Lee talked about how what made Spider-Man successful was that it wasn’t his powers that let him win the day so often, it was Peter’s heart and scientific knowledge.  The more clearly the character is defined, the easier it is to avoid that Mary Sue ending where the protagonist is simply better than the antagonist at their game.

4 Make your heroes actually be heroes and your villains be villains: A major failing of almost all mass media anymore.  There’s precious little difference between protagonists and antagonists in so many TV stories, movies, etc…

A villain with depth is great.  Magneto from the X-Men being a classic example.  He has a cause, and a reason why he goes about it the way he does.  At the end of the day though, he’s still a villain.  The irony of the character that’s lost on many modern readers is that he was oppressed by Nazis so he feels justified in using the same logic and ideology as Nazis to protect mutants.

Nowadays, everything is moral relativism though, and some try to justify that as realism.  It’s about as realistic as saying there’s no difference between a peace loving Muslim and a suicide bomber.  Think about all the best selling books and movies in recent memory also.  Every one of them had a hero that was standing up for what was right.  Everything from Hunger Games to Avengers.  The heroes may be flawed, and should be to some degree, but at their core, they’re still heroes.  Likewise no matter how the villains try to justify themselves, or how tragic a character they might be, they’re still villains.

5 Do NOT Get Overly Preachy with Social Messages: Something the Twitter crowd doesn’t understand.  You LOSE and outright alienate more readers this way than you gain.  Comics have gotten BAD about this the last decade also.  It’s the same kind of mentality that led Jussie Smollett to do what he did, with the same result that less people are going to be willing to listen to similar issues in the future.

Social issues have had a place in story telling since the dawn of time.  Comics started with them in the 60s.  They did a fine job up until the 90s also.  My favorite old example is a Captain America storyline where the government tried to compel him back into gvernment service.  It was a great story about the meaning of patriotism.  Steve ultimately told the government to stuff it, and that while he believed in the country and the American Dream, the government had no right to control a citizen’s life.  It was a good story that acknowledged the good and bad of patriotism and loyalty in general; how there had to be common sense and balance.  Compare that with today how everything is about how horrible the West is while more and more of it’s critics flee TO the West.

Even when part of a story is racism or sexism; things with no upside…  Don’t aggressively beat people to death with it, or portray any group as all bad.  Yes, there are sexist men out there, but labeling every straight male in your story as a rapist is unrealistic and will alienate the average reader.  Strive for a rational portrayal of social issues and you’ll reach more people.

 

OK, long post.  Took forever to write also.  Hopefully I gave some of my fellow authors some food for thought however. 🙂

IF…

OK, trying this one more time since it didn’t format worth a damned last time…

Anyway, some advice from Rudyard Kipling via PoetryFoundation.org

If you can keep your head when all about you   
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;   
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   
    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same;   
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
    And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   
    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
    If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   
    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!