Back in January of 2013, I was in a San Francisco bar with Vi Hart: mathemusician, videotrix, and all-around lovely person. We’d both been fans of each other’s work for years without knowing it, and had recently been introduced by a mutual friend.

This was our first time meeting in person. I had just finished the first draft the story you now hold, and Vi had agreed to take a look at it and give me her opinion.

We spent a couple hours talking about the story, our conversation frequently tangenting off in odd directions, the way good conversations do.

Her feedback was really good. Not just clever, but startlingly insightful. When I mentioned this to her, she looked slightly amused and explained that writing was most of what she did. She scripted her videos, then recorded them. The scripting was the lion’s share of the work.

She pointed out some things that needed work in the story, some rough spots, some logical incongruities. She pointed out the parts she liked, too, and talked about the story as a whole.

I should mention that by this point in the evening, I was slightly drunk. A bit of a rarity for me. But since we were hanging out in a bar, it seemed polite to buy a drink. Then I had a drink because Vi was having another, and I wanted to be social. Then I had another because I was a little nervous about meeting Vi for the first time. Then I had another because I was a little nervous about my story.

Well, let’s be honest, I was more than a little nervous about the story. I knew, deep in my heart of hearts, that my new-wrought story was a train wreck. A colossal, smoldering mess of a train wreck.

“It doesn’t do the things a story is supposed to do,” I said to her. “A story should have dialogue, action, conflict. A story should have more than one character. I’ve written a thirty-thousand-word vignette!”

Vi said she liked it.

“Well, yes,” I said. “I like it too. But that doesn’t matter. You see, people expect certain things from a story,” I explained. “You can leave out one or two if you step carefully, but you can’t ditch all of them. The closest thing I have to an action scene is someone making soap. I spend eight pages describing someone making soap. Eight pages of a sixty-page story making soap. That’s something a crazy person does.”

As I’ve said, I was really worried about the story. And perhaps more than slightly drunk. And I was finally getting something off my chest that I hadn’t really shared with anyone before.

“People are going to read this and be pissed,” I said.