WRITINGS | questjaeger

Quest's Writings

Quest loved to write. He was good at it. He planned to be a writer, and devoted hundreds of hours to writing.

Quest posted this on Facebook in response to the Newtown incident:

It is times like these that force us to think. They shock us so greatly that we must take a moment to step back from our lives. And when this happens we are allowed to see the world in a whole new way. We begin to question what is truly important and what, at the end of the day, truly matters. We think about the many sleepless nights trying to better our grades or beat a high score. We reminisce about working tirelessly to keep our rooms clean and to get our chores done. And then we realize that we live in a bubble, one that could pop in the blink of an eye, one that is more fragile than we could ever imagine. So when it is gone what are we left with? The answer for many of us is wasted time. Time not spent with loved ones, time wasted on what become pointless endeavors, time that we so often took for granted. It only takes 1.8 seconds to say "I love you" but what those words leave behind will last for a lifetime.

Quest wrote this for one of his classes to explain how much he enjoyed the editing process:

I do a lot of writing, at least for a teenager. I've been doing it since I was a little kid. And every step of the way I have hated revision. My writing is not perfect, very far from it, but I have never liked going back and analyzing my sentences, fixing my phrases and bettering my piece. I simply did not have the patience for it. When I would give my manuscripts to my family they would come back full of red marks and spelling corrections and I hated it....But now I know that they were just trying to help. I knew that I would have to edit them at some point but not right then and there. I also had a tendency to be stubborn with my scenes. I didn’t want to go back and change my perfect scene, and then have to double check all the details to ensure that they were consistent.

Quest planned to write science fiction. Team 21 was his novel. He was deep into the fourth re-write. It was a labor of love. We have provided brief excerpts here:

2/17/2156

Aboard UNS. Galactic Enforcer

0900 hours
I watched the little yellow sphere hover in front of me, drifting slowly to my left. It really was amazing, being out here. It was amazing to part of this whole thing. Four hundred years ago the first settlers landed on what was soon to be the United States of America. And here we were, the second wave of humans. On our way to the new world, the next chapter in human history, and I was going to be a part of it.

...

When I first met Katsu I had been very intimidated by him. So big and always so mysterious, but it grows on you. You don’t quite understand it but you accept it and eventually you come to enjoy his tranquil personality.