I read to think

Book acquired: Sludge Utopia, by Catherine Fatima.

Our focus in writing is writing itself: writing as a predictive act; different forms of it: "impressionistic" vs. "structural"; trust and seduction; the point of capture; how confusion or dislocation can be used to a writer's advantage; writing in silences, and how a reader can be provoked to complement a piece, fill in empty spaces.

All my reading is research. I'm researching the book I intend to write. I am researching how to write a book, by reading books that have been written and reverse engineering them. I am researching what it means to be me reading a book, as material for my book.

It is a novel, but it is a little bit not a novel. It is a little bit like the essays I've read, which are more like memoirs. Or like memoir-like novels. A first-person confessional, although I have nothing to confess, I've done nothing wrong.

All the books are trying to tell me something. It's as if I need to reread them, or read more of them, and maybe one day I'll hear their message clearly. In the meantime, they're talking amongst themselves, mocking me gently. They are all thought-provoking, my book will be thought-provoking. (Although, if you think about it, all books are thought-provoking if you think about them the right way.)

I've been gestating a book since spring. Will it be fiction or poetry or a speculative memoir? Yes it will.

I need to consult others regarding matters to which I am too fearful to attest. I read to think: thank goodness someone else feels this way! Thank goodness someone recognizes this. Thank goodness someone else sees value in what I see value in. I seek authority to evade authority. I need explanations for the world because I think my own do not suffice.