"At first glance, you might think that this entire book is a joke -- more a parody of a writing journal than something to be tackled in earnest. And. well, yes, a lot of these exercises are ridiculous. They're over-specific, petulant, contradictory. If you want to describe them as parodies of writing advice, I'm pretty comfortable with that. However! In addition to being parodies, I mean every single one of them sincerely. I genuinely believe every single one of these exercises can teach us something about ourselves, about our relationship to language." - Ross Sutherland, Introduction.