A Writer's Notebook, Day Seven-Hundred-And-Thirty

 I began a new story tonight, though it is a bit tenuous at present and I am not certain what is coming.  There is a general idea of the plot, or at least the start of it, but I am not certain about all the details even of the character(s) yet, and started more with a sense of setting than anything else.  I am considering a few possibilities for the story and I am certain that one will sort itself to the top by the time I am back to work tomorrow.  Or it will not, and I will need to find a new solution or will discover I had another idea in mind already.  It is strange how often it can be difficult to know what the work will be until it begins to unfold, even when I do have a clear sense of the work at core.

One of the issues in my mind right now is how to apply much of my deeper thinking in my work.  This is both to do with the textual aspects, and with the political concepts that underlie much of my thinking, especially with this nation in such a state.  I think many would look at a lot of my work and not recognize it as existing in that sphere, and I have seen that as a power, but I also recognize that I need to put more in the work to express those meanings in other ways.  In part, their is a central question, for me, about meaning and the questions of truth that are central to so much of the worst things happening on a daily basis in the news.  These sound like deep and detached questions of philosophy, but we are at a time when it is clear that it is easy to exist in a reality that does not include certain facts or presents them through a lens that alters it all to be unrecognizable.  The issue of what voices we give access to our minds and what they are doing once there underlies has become a practical concern in an age where conspiracy theories, pseudo-science, and other forms of misinformation are central drivers of the crises in our lives.  Considering this question helps me to frame the story I am working on, offers me an understanding of what I am hoping it can communicate.

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