Writer's Notebook, Day Seven-Hundred-And-Eighty-One

 I am attempting to remain focused on my work right now.  It has not been easy, but I did begin a new essay today that I feel is important, and which deals with the issue of anti-Semitism in Dracula, as I mentioned before here.  It is, of course, a far more well planned piece, and I have only gotten through the introductory section this far, but I think I have a good sense of how to continue.  The hardest part may be creating proper citation and such, as I've been reading so much the information is largely integrated into my thinking at this point.  I think I am going to lay out the essay first and then work on those aspects next.  I can lay out a first draft and find the places where I want to add specifics, so I am not trying to dig it up while writing, chasing down a source I can't find and avoiding the real work.

I've also been working on fiction and poetry.  I think I am getting to the heart of the story I have been writing, which has been rather slow to develop, but I feel it clicking into place.  My process with fiction often involves having a central notion of the story, involving themes and larger plot elements, but the writing often becomes a slow exploration, a wandering through to find out what is happening.  I'm not certain this is my ideal way of working, but it is my present approach.  There is a distinct difference in the process when I am writing poetry, even when I am working on a piece for more than one day, but I can't make it clear the thought shift, or the specifics of what I am doing in either case that is distinct.  It may be a focal issue, that I tend to control fiction more in many ways, from linguistic to conceptual.  That limitation is often specific to the piece, not an overall limit on what I write, but a narrowing of the work in this case.  In poetry, I do not usually worry in that way.  I have formal concerns, but that is quite different, and I am very often doing things in order to create tension against those aspects, using informal language in a formal construction, or allowing a seeming tangent to take over a poem for a time.  It is a very different approach, and I wonder if the core difference in my understanding of poetry verses my understanding of fiction, as I know I am far more comfortable in poetry and can juggle far more without considering it.  I've reached a point of intuitive capacity with poetry, but my fiction experience is not so complete, and so it is necessary for me to choose what I am doing in more specific and overt ways, and do not recognize, yet, the opportunities to play and go outside the prescribed elements.  It may be that I am wrong, and fiction has a need I am fulfilling that I've yet to consider, but it feels that it may be more a matter of writing a greater amount of fiction and what I will inherently learn from that.

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