5 Things from my WIP (novel):
- a material history of a cell phone call
- a chapter starting in a stomach
- a list of how much debt every character has
- 10 characters in search of an author
- a chapter that annotates a life story with the bad public policy that structures it.
It’s a novel about the socio-political- material narratives we leave out of our conventional stories. And why they matter (is that a pun? Yes!).
What if we were honest about the ways in which we are connected across complex geographies and ecologies?
How might we approach life & decisions & how we move within the world and understand it differently?
In short, the way we tell stories invisibilizes relations of exploitation and harm and telling stories differently might be critical for ecological & social justice. Or something
It is a book about different ways we could write books inspired by Queneau’s Exercises in Style.
I have no fucking clue what I’m doing or whether it will be readable at the end. But, you know, experimental writing is the equivalent of basic research in science. So. Trying anyways!
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Okay. Starting on my 5,000 word goal for the day. Can I do it? Likely not. Will I try anyways? Maybe.
(I just wrote 1,800 words in an hour for an article for a client and submitted it. 1,800 words! In a goddamn hour. With two proofreads. My brain is tired).
The writing today is going to come slowly and painfully. I am celebrating small victories to keep me from being demoralized by how complicated and uncertain this is. Fuck this chapter. I hate it.
500/5,000
This chapter is growing on me. I don’t know if it’s good but it’s at least clear to me now how to write a draft of it. I guess I don’t hate it. Maybe.
Had a dream that someone was going through my tweets and reporting every one I wrote about being disabled as fraudulent.
It was deeply traumatic to deal with all the rumours. A close family member called up other family members for months after I was injured as I was learning to walk and talk at the same time again and collapsing in public and told them I was making it up for attention.
That is only one instance. Of many other instances. Brain injuries are notorious for people not believing you about them because of their invisibility and how they are dynamic disabilities that are constantly emergent and shifting.