The Battle of The Wits: Sadie Kaye versus Nathan Lauer

How Far Up The Glass Escalator Can Mediocre White Man With An MFA Fall? Pretty F*cking Far!

The Writer’s Gauntlet with Sadie Kaye is a regular column at The Hooghly Review. This article is being reprinted with The Review’s permission.

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SK: What’s the last thing you researched that has probably put you on a government watchlist?

NL: The feasibility of lithium batteries as terror-bombing incendiaries. As long as you tell most major LLM AIs that it’s research for a novel, they’ll help you out with all sorts of criming.

If a detective looked at your browser tabs right now, would they arrest you, call an exorcist, or buy you a weighted blanket?

I prefer Thundershirt™ brand, thank you. They’re all day-job tabs.

When you’re stuck on a scene, grappling for a metaphorical weapon, do you precision-strike like a sniper, or spray and pray like Trump?

I snipe as I snipe on Playstation, unable to coordinate my thumb on the stick with my finger on the trigger, hesitant too long before emptying the chamber as the unscathed objective takes cover behind a non-explosive barrel and his twenty-seven NPC associates run up the stairs to my dead-end perch and I can’t aim at them properly because I can’t figure out how to switch off the zoom-to-scope view. Metaphorically.

^{Nathan and his dog-faced-boy-syndrome son, Chico}

What’s a word you’ve used in a draft that you definitely don’t know how to pronounce?

No, you’re wrong. It’s either pronounced kee-HO-tik or the guy’s name is Don Kwiksoat.

Would you rather delete your favourite 5,000-word chapter or replace every instance of ‘said’ with ‘ejaculated’?

Please clarify: did you ejaculate that this would happen only to the one chapter that otherwise gets deleted, or to whatever I ejaculate everywhere forevermore?

Forevermore. Are your characters named after ancient deities and celestial bodies, or did you just glance at a spice rack and decide ‘Cumin’ sounded heroic?

I name them after people such as the guy who rang up the cumin at the cash register who is himself really into Babylonian esotericism but not so much that he changed his name to Zoltan ben’Marduk or anything.

If you could magically delete one trope from existence, which one are you throwing under the bus with zero regrets?

That fictional sadomasochistic relationships must be realistically ethical. Yes, we all know that “Secretary” doesn’t depict a healthy BDSM relationship on film, it depicts something that isn’t mind-numbingly boring.

What font do you write in and why is it superior to everyone else’s?

I switched to Atkinson hyperlegible two years ago. It’s the only font that ever justified its existence to me in terms of a functional goal. Little known fact: the numeral ‘one’, upper-case ‘i’, and lower case ‘L’ actually have distinct semantic meanings and are not interchangeable with one another.

Oxford Comma: Life-saving necessity or pretentious clutter?

I will fight you.

Plotter or Pantser?

Upon realizing my planned plot had been shit all along, I shit my pants in fear, produce a first draft which is shit, and then attempt to sculpt the shit into a weight-bearing structure.

^{Nathan and his niece}

What’s your writing ritual and why is it a cursed superstition?

I typically procrastinate by doing the dishes before writing, but they ALWAYS COME BACK…

One word that makes you go feral every time you see it misused?

I’ve seen it more than once, indicating that some Chinese Communist Party-approved English-language teaching resource used across the People’s Republic is teaching students that the word “kitsch” can refer to mental constructs and categories of behavior.

What non-existent job do you wish existed?

Assistant to the regional assassin, Western Pennsylvania, USA. Duties include reminding your supervisor to aim for center mass.

Would you rather find a typo in the first sentence of your freshly published novel or the last?

Last. Far less likely that a bookshop browser will stumble on it and be prejudiced against buying the thing.

Would you rather your status on Submittable remain forever ‘received’ or ‘in-progress’?

In-progress. It’s one step closer to the satisfaction of “See? I told you I was a worthless piece of shit.”

Which creature adds more joy to your world: butterflies or geckos?

“Gecko” is an onomatopoetic name. You can ask a gecko what it’s called and it might tell you after it’s done licking its own eyeball. The sole function of butterflies is to serve as a metaphor for realizing that you’re fuckable at university. No contest.

If you could teleport, but only to places you’ve tripped and fallen, where are you tripping?

The Haymarket Café, Northampton, Massachusetts, USA, where I fell in love with a beautiful Smithie and often found myself several hours after taking an awful lot of lysergic acid diethylamide.

Cursor status: blinking and judgmental or solid and reassuring?

Annoyingly invisible in dark mode.

^{Nipping in for a Starbuck’s (2019)}

Drafting fuel: coffee, tea, liquor, Haribo or the tears of your antagonists?

Prescription amphetamines.

Stinky Books: old library vanilla or fresh-off-the-press chemicals?

Vanilla with edge-notes of roasted brown pulp.

Your author’s bio as a clickbait headline?

How Far Up The Glass Escalator Can Mediocre White Man With An MFA Fall? Pretty F*cking Far!

How do you write: sitting like a human or perched like a gargoyle?

Sitting like a gargoyle tipped backwards into the sofa.

Describe your latest WIP using three emojis and no context.

Black-Santa Whale Fart

‘Chaos Desk’ or ‘Aesthetic Nook’?

Too chaotic and nook-sized to compete with a laptop on the sofa most days.

Would you prefer a 1-star review that says ‘This changed my life for the worse’ or a 3-star review that says ‘It was fine’?

“Your boos mean nothing to me, I’ve seen what you cheer.” — Richard Sanchez

Would you rather commit bookish blasphemy by dog-earing the pages of a rare first edition or reading the ending of every book before you start chapter one?

Wuthering what, now? Why are you crying?

Who is your ultimate nemesis: the person who types ‘K’ as a full response or the person who leaves 1 second left on the microwave?

I am both of these people but I hate myself for entirely different reasons.

If you had to turn into an animal for an hour every day, are you a Majestic Hawk (great view, very cold) or a Fat Housecat (great nap, very judged)?

Hawk, but only because I have the naps and judgments covered in my present incarnation.

Is ‘breakfast for dinner’ a symbol of freedom or a sign that society has failed?

A sign that Foodpanda has switched to must-install-our-app-on-your-phone access and that’s the hill I die on for some reason. By which I mean society has failed.

What’s the most useless talent you possess that you humblebrag about?

I instinctually memorize the number of warning beeps / blinky don’t-walk men provided at every crosswalk I pass.

NATHAN LAUER – YOU HAVE PASSED THE WRITER’S GAUNTLET!

THANK YOU FOR YOUR WIT AND WRITERLY WISDOM!

Think you’ve got what it takes to ride The Writer’s Gauntlet? Email or (preferably) DM Sadie on IG @KayeSadie @TheHooghlyReview

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Nathan Lauer is an American writing out of Hong Kong. His story “Xunxin Zishi Zui” won the Creative Writing Prize in RTHK, HKFP, and PENNHK’s Hong Kong’s Top Story 2017. His latest work, The Hard Problem, is a novella contracted for serialized publication over the next year in Lovecraftiana: the Magazine of Eldritch Horror, beginning in Vol 11 Issue 1 Walpurgisnacht 2026 (For those of you who didn’t aspire to sleep with Neopagans at university, that means April). Perhaps because he cannot do, Nathan teaches fiction writing at the postgraduate level. He has no social media presence, which is almost certainly a problem in itself as well as a sign of deeper problems.

Nathan isn’t on any social media. This is Nathan’s wife’s FB: @liz.ho.904 Nathan doesn’t have any socials. (It’s a whole thing). You can also tag him to the Hong Kong Writer’s Circle on IG: @hongkongwriterscircle

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