Defining this blog

I'm putting some thought into what this blog should focus on. For me it comes down to how writing gets done, what it means to me, and trying to find out where it comes from in a time with so much anxiety about the future of the written word. I'm interested in new writing, but just understanding what the present of writing is difficult enough. For the most part, literary study covers the past of writing well enough.

I know I want to process some of the unspoken, unwritten and unpublished thinking I've done on anthropology and fiction. I think both of those genres of writing and thinking are relevant to where we are as a culture right now. Anthropological thinking is helpful as we become less isolationist and more involved in the diverse world, and as American society begins to process the existing diversity. I see fiction as the most flexible and complicated form of writing that we have available to us now. I think the two genres are headed toward an understanding and admixture.

Writers are strongly influenced by what they read, and I've been reading a lot of journalism because of the drama of current events. I'll never be a journalist, but reading the form obviously affects how I'm writing fiction these days, and I want to figure out what that means. My next post will be about the effect of reading journalism on my writing.