A Writer's Notebook, Day One-Thousand-Six-Hundred-And-Seventy-Seven

I have been starting work on a lot of new non-fiction recently.  I'm still working on my long project, but it can be helpful for me to get a break from it, at least for a few days.  Very often, I do not like to step away from a piece until I am done, but in this case, so much is already written that their is a certain inertia which brings me back without too much difficulty.  I suspect that it might be different were it a piece of fiction, though I cannot explain exactly why.  In any event, I have a few shorter essays going now as well.  Tonight, I began one that is discussing language around fatness and why I tend to disagree with those who want to reclaim the word "fat."  My argument, essentially, is that the construction, "I am fat," is literally identifying as fat, not as a person who is carrying excess fat, but as the fat itself, which I find troubling, especially since I have very often felt my identity reduced down solely to that one attribute.

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