There is a courage that this type of interiority demands, which defies what Melissa Febos calls in her book Body Work, “the fantasy of toughness-the idea that lack of feeling signified mastery of it.” As someone who processes the world in an internal way, reading dispatches from the interior of someone else’s mind makes me feel less afraid of my own mind, and more importantly, less alone. More than anything, I love books that allow big ideas room to breathe without forcing an answer or claiming to have it all figured out. It’s the exact opposite of being online, where everything is flattened on a screen and reduced to binary thinking, a simplistic one liner or an overly airbrushed image. From lyrical essays to fiction, to experimental memoir, these are books by writers caught in thoughtful rumination, using an event or a question as a jumping off point to explore broader philosophical themes in a way that feels alive and porous and complex (also me trying to describe wine). I’ve always been drawn to books by writers who possess a similar compulsion to think their way out of a problem or a state of being. Major themes surfaced, like fear of motherhood, being an artist, waiting for real life to begin also nut allergies for some reason. ![]() ![]() This groundbreaking realization, of how writing works, helped me see myself more clearly. It wasn’t until I completed my final edits earlier this year that I started to notice patterns emerging. ![]() When I started writing my story collection Bad Thoughts, I scrolled through my thoughts document (labelled “TAXES…LOOK AWAY!) in search of story prompts.
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