A Writer's Notebook, Day One-Thousand-And-Ninety-One

I spent some time today thinking about the idea I have mentioned for a new, larger, writing project.  Ostensibly, a novel, though, as I have said before, I want it to be something else in a way that I have been having difficulty articulating.  I think I do have a better sense of what I am thinking about, and may be able to explain it a bit more clearly.  This is still just me working through the idea, of course, but doing so here might help me articulate it, even to myself.  

A large part of the idea is to do with creating a sort of intimate encounter for the reader, an experience that is more like a performance than a traditional story.  The reader is being guided through something by the narrator, and is in a direct relationship with that speaker, not just reading it abstractly, but seeing it, in some sense, as a conversation they are engaged in.  Not that I expect the reader to respond, but in terms of the kind of encounter that I am hoping to develop for the reader.  All this still feels unclear in a way that makes it silly or crazy or just nonsensical, but I have a sense that their is something underneath that I am still getting at, and I sense that there are other layers to this idea, necessary components that are already forming in my mind, but the development of those elements seems to be contingent on really understanding the core intent.

I can imagine it, in a way, as a guided tour, as the reader being asked to imagine being led through some kind of mysterious space, where various exhibits are presented, things that reflect elements of a story, but with that story being one that the reader is part of, that might be happening outside the pages of the book as it is being read.  I mean, the idea is to present elements that are universal, that can be recognized by anyone, and weaving them together in the background, creating the structure, the organizational aspects, that make a story into a story while allowing the content to come from the reader's experiences outside the book.  Again, it is hard to be clearer, right now, as I am still formulating this, but the notion is more metaphorical, I think, than literal.  I also think that it will be, at least in part, a memoir or autobiographical, but not in a way that is fictional, not as a story that is based on my life, but including those elements in a context that also includes surreal and fantastical elements.  In some way, I want all three of these things, the fiction, the memoir components, and the components elicited from the reader to be symmetrical, to seem to line up and be, in some sense, a single thing, as if each is a perspective on or depiction of the same thing.

I don't expect any of this is sensible to anyone.  I am still struggling to conceive of this in a way that is not just a mismash, to grab hold of it in a way that feels it can be brought down to language, and it may be that the idea is not sound, that I won't find my way forward.  Still, I have a sense that something is at the center of this.  It is not a new idea for me, not entirely, but one that has already evolved over years of thought.  I recall numerous attempts to grapple with ideas of this sort before, and often they have been pushed aside.  This time, though, it is feeling different, is fuller and seems as if it is almost possible to grasp.  I need to think on it a bit more, but I am hopeful that I might have a good sense of it soon enough to start writing something.  Maybe part of the creative drain I have felt recently was just a byproduct of my unconscious working through some of these ideas in the back of my mind.