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

I mentioned that I have been working on a critical essay, of sorts, and that piece has gone well, but it became far more complex, involving personal elements and roving from the specifics of the topic, in a way that makes me want to expand it further.  At the same time, I am also feeling it is important to respond in a more limited and direct way to the work in question, and so I have been attempting to work on a shorter piece that I might be able to place in a more immediate time-frame.  The difficulty of this, for me, is that I don't usually attempt to write in this more constrained and direct manner, and, as such, am having a bit of difficulty entering the piece.  In many ways the methods that are most suitable for such a challenge feel, to me, cliche, but they are also the signposts that matter in such a piece, in some ways.  I do wonder, though, how much of this is my own hesitancy to get stuck doing certain kinds of work, though this piece, I recognize, is a needed exception for me.  I think I have certain restraints on the kind of writing I am most interested in, and a fear of becoming stuck within a role that does not allow me to follow the path those interests dictate.  This is, on one hand, a strange and silly projection, and I have no reason to believe I will do well in any arena, but I am also aware of many writers who have found themselves in such situations.  At the same time, I also recognize that this is a situation where I feel I have an important commentary, both in terms of the direct impetus, and in a larger sense which allows this to be an occassion to, potentially, open a larger conversation.

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