Questioning Potential Future Uses of my Notes

The question of my notes continues. So far, I've divided some of the stacks of paper that I've taken upon myself to go through into pre-existing categories. There were letters from a few people who I was strongly influenced by, growing up. This includes the letters between myself and my jazz teacher in high-school via printed-out e-mails. This includes the later letters in my twenties between myself and my audio teacher in my twenties via e-mails. I have a file including letters to/from Danielle, my best friend growing up who is now in prison (hence the letters). I have a file including correspondence notes between myself and a particular writer who strongly influenced me to decide to pursue writing. Furthermore, I have letters that have recently begun between me and the Deputy Cultural Attache for the Consulate of France, Ivan Bertoux, via e-mail. Thus, one category, that I must consider for the stacks of paper that I keep in my files is LETTERS or CORRESPONDENCE. This could become a key component of my future assimilation or regenerative use that I prescribe for these notes.

I think the reason I'm going through these stacks of papers is that by categorizing, I'm cultivating a better understanding of the difficulty of text for both ARCHIVING purposes and knowing how to make sense of them, when my own past selves were the authors. This is another key component: PAST SELVES as AUTHORS.

I suppose more than anything, this is an attempt at literary criticism in a somewhat meta-fictional manner, or perhaps even meta-autobiographical. Because I don't understand or know enough about those terms, I'm going to attempt to learn more, before going too far in using them to describe this project. To do so, there is a Metafiction class that a class-mate of mine set up online to use. But I would like to explore this further in relation to how I'm perceiving my own texts. Thus, METAFICTION is of importance to me.

Another realization that I am having is that I have used the medium of writing to conjure up very hybrid formats of writing that are perhaps part of the reason that my writing has very little consistency. In looking at many of my past projects, it seems that I am somewhat of a diarist, somewhat of a critic, and somewhat of a collagist in both my fiction and non-fiction writings. The nature and use of COLLAGE is of particular interest, because it suggests a dissatisfaction with singular mediums as a means to express. The question of medium is interesting to me, as well. There are many mediums that appear to be cropping up in my creative projects including textual mystery that results in NONSENSE in Medication for Saltambiques; SHORT FICTIONS in Vignette Fictions which are conducive to including another medium to make them more robust (which I used a blog format to allow people to expand or change the existing fiction in a collaborative model); because we were doing so much editing of people's papers in my short fiction class, I also began to make a play of this idea and I used the idea of making notes and turned it into a conceptual joke by writing three comments on papers that I kept for my own mimicry. Thus, with all of the stacks of edited stories I have sitting on my floor, the EDIT is a textual form that I would like to explore further. I have the workings of a NOVEL which is part narrative, part extended metaphor, and part that I don't have a word for, which is taking a recurrent theme in artworks and mimicking the cultural changes by reflecting it in my characters, as a progression. Basically, I want to use a historical progression in the way that art-critics describe it, following a subject that a limited set of artists have created in the synthesis of their work and openly mimicking the change in the narrative of the story between my characters. Another place that I found this form was Sophie's world, in which the main character is woven through the history of philosophy. I'll call this textual form, a PROGRESSION MIRROR.

I like the idea of borrowing from the existing forms of work that lay in the stacks of paper on my floor and making them undergo further permutations that progress from the state they are currently in. For example, I would like to do something with the feedback I received for a number of my stories in school. I would like to view them with regards for how to make use or fun with the style the EDIT. This could do a number of things. It could either demonstrate the flawed translation between the Editor and the Editee. It could also demonstrate the optimistic improvement cycle. It could even demonstrate the contradictions between various edits, by following different pieces of advice in full, leading the story towards a nonsense-like result.

There are plenty of notes that don't have a simplistic framework of genre, like some of my pieces do. Some of the easiest to perceive are those which I would classify as STORY or STORY HYBRID. The difficulty is to decide whether to salvage or to scrap an INCOMPLETE STORY or INCOMPLETE THOUGHT. My methodology of taste, standards, or purpose comes up when the question of salvage or scrap comes up. Or for that matter, to even decide to what extent it is actually complete or incomplete. Similarly, if I were to continue them along a line of progress, it is difficult to say whether they should or should not still aim for the perfection of the story genre. Instead, they could become more of a conceptual hybrid, that would perhaps be more satisfactory for me because it does not involve the validation of publication, but rather the personal validation of my 'calling' or a more honest kind of experimentation or creative pursuit, because it does not involve the simplistic and degrading needs of aspiring to be 'like others' who 'get published' for 'writing stories'. I don't really see myself as one of 'them' in my authorship. Instead, I see myself as more of a conceptual artist in print. Or perhaps even a hybrid diarist or self-conscious critic.

Some of my notes are not even stories at all. Some of them are LISTS, REMINDERS, ART PROJECT DESCRIPTIONS, RULES, BEHAVIORAL SUGGESTIONS, QUESTIONS (to myself), CONVERSATIONS (with myself), descriptions of DREAMS, LAMENTATIONS, LEXICONS, ETC. Some of them are hand-written, some of them are type-written, and to bring them to a finished state, I think it matters what the material is. Some writings are like objects, books are lovely art-works even with their mass-produced appeal. The medium of text is going digital, so I wonder if I should put effort into creating documents that have a particular kind of physical appeal, or even if I should format them in a particular way, to convey a style or intent. Someone I know who even does this in his text-habits on the computer is Janey Smith. In fact, my use of CAPS is derivative of his, but I think we use them in a different way. He is a lot more interested in humor than I am.

The large number of dedications 'to-myself' indicate a question of the mirror, the reflection of the self, the self-conscious dilemma, the inward spiral to the deep abyss. This is something to question and explore further.

What has come of this brief rumination is a list of potential ways to conceive of my writing as a textual habit:
LETTERS or CORRESPONDENCE, PAST SELVES as AUTHORS, ARCHIVING, METAFICTION, COLLAGE, NONSENSE, SHORT FICTIONS, THE EDIT, PROGRESSION MIRROR, STORY, STORY HYBRID, INCOMPLETE STORY, INCOMPLETE THOUGHT, LISTS, REMINDERS, ART PROJECT DESCRIPTIONS, RULES, BEHAVIORAL SUGGESTIONS, QUESTIONS (to myself), CONVERSATIONS (with myself), descriptions of DREAMS, LAMENTATIONS, LEXICONS