A Writer's Notebook, Day One-Thousand-Two-Hundred-And-Twenty-Four

I am thinking about the question of whether a writer can create a piece that causes their to be a consequence for the act of reading it.  In some sense, this is clearly certain, if a piece is able to impact a reader in the proper way, but that is not the sense I am intending here, I mean in a more direct way, not through the meaning or symbolic resonance, but that the reading of the work itself is somehow an action that has weight.  Consider, for instance, a fictional character who rebels at some point in a story, recognizing the world as fiction and distraught over the trials and burdens of the story, and decries both writer and reader for imagining them, for dreaming them into being, in some form, only for such silly entertainment.  I don't know if such a story could really work, though the idea has been in my mind for some time.  I think their is an attempt at another expression of a similar concept in my first novel, and thinking on it from this perspective may be helpful in knowing how I might pitch that book as well.  In the book, the concept is somewhat inverted, with it being an implicit question within the work, not a direct charge.  Indeed, it is more sinister, with the question of what might be impelling the writer in creating this work, and what that might mean for a reader.  It is a bit similar, when I consider it, to the premise in certain scary movies of a character being driven mad by a book, but as told from within the book, with the reader cast in the position usually occupied by the protagonist.  It has taken me a long time to reach a point where I can begin to succinctly describe that aspect of it, and it is a simplification, to a great degree, but that is less important, right at the moment, than whether it might be a good hook in a query letter, if I am honest.