{"id":1682,"date":"2012-03-19T16:23:35","date_gmt":"2012-03-19T20:23:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.old.caraghobrien.com\/book\/?p=1682"},"modified":"2012-03-19T16:23:35","modified_gmt":"2012-03-19T20:23:35","slug":"the-inchoate-fragile-and-strange","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/birthmarked\/the-inchoate-fragile-and-strange\/","title":{"rendered":"The Inchoate, Fragile, and Strange"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Starting a new book is an exciting time of discovery, but also a solitary one, at least for me. \u00a0I\u2019ve had several kind friends ask me lately what I\u2019m working on.\u00a0 It feels impolite to say I can\u2019t really talk about it, like I\u2019m holding out or I don\u2019t trust them, but distrust is not why I don\u2019t talk about my ideas.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-1683\" title=\"LostAndFound\" src=\"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/LostAndFound.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"270\" height=\"290\" \/>The problem is that the ideas themselves are so fragile and shifting that by trying to summarize them into something coherent, I\u2019m changing what they are.\u00a0 Whether I talk about a new favorite character, focus on the conflict, or describe the world, I\u2019m picking out some ideas or threads over others, and it feels like I\u2019m making a promise I can\u2019t keep, either to my friend or to my story.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s like the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, where you can\u2019t know the momentum and position of a particle at the same time, but this principle is for ideas.\u00a0 The measuring itself, or the talking, changes the outcome.<\/p>\n<p>The few times I\u2019ve tried to talk about early ideas, it has made the writing harder or slower.\u00a0 If I know a friend smiled or nodded at an idea, or seemed interested in another, or asked a question about another, then in the back of my mind, I\u2019m already responding to that feedback, even if it wasn\u2019t intended.\u00a0 It makes me doubt my ideas in reflection of another\u2019s response, instead of purely on my own.\u00a0 I try to please them going forward, and that is limiting when I need to cast my net as wide as possible for all sorts of ideas.<\/p>\n<p>I should add that my ideas are not merely bouncing around in my head, completely unformed.\u00a0 They\u2019re on paper, pages and pages of them by now, simmering and percolating with wrong directions and half-starts.\u00a0 They\u2019re taking on a shape I can\u2019t yet see fully, and the process is an intriguing mix of \u201cAha!\u201d and \u201cWhat next?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So, in case you ask me, that\u2019s why I\u2019m evasive.\u00a0 I don\u2019t mean to be impolite.\u00a0 I\u2019m just playing in the twilight alone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Starting a new book is an exciting time of discovery, but also a solitary one, at least for me. \u00a0I\u2019ve had several kind friends ask me lately what I\u2019m working on.\u00a0 It feels impolite to say I can\u2019t really talk about it, like I\u2019m holding out or I don\u2019t trust them, but distrust is not [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[37],"class_list":["post-1682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birthmarked","tag-writing-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1682"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1689,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1682\/revisions\/1689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}