Intra

I can't write extroverted people. I tried once, and it was a disaster. What I can do, however, is take a set of relatively trivial personal happenings, de-contextualize them and spin them off as some sort of commentary. For example, we start with a character (bland, medium height, herd clothing). He is taking a bus. He does not like taking the bus. He proceeds to tell his narrator why he does not like taking the bus. He arrives at work. He attempts to define an ongoing nameless dread. He sits in the cafeteria chewing meat and finds his cafeteria-issue kaiser bun particularly fascianting. Several pages of text spill over into each other. He goes back to work. He thinks about what he is going to do this weekend--he's been meaning to propose a dramatic ultimatum to his on-again-off-again love interest. He obsesses over that while playing solitaire, dissecting their latest phatic conversation. He writes up a plan in his head as he is doing the spreadsheets and e-mails the plan to himself. He's back on the bus; his afternoon commute is even more unpleasant than the morning one. He watches TV while trying to will himself to pick up the telephone. "I'm going to do it. I'll give her a piece of my mind." After some light reading (Deepak Chopra) he nods off to sleep. He has dreams where fiery figures chase each other through the aether.

(It was not my intent to present the last paragraph as androcentric, heteronormative or an endorsement of a carnivorous lifestyle. But it might have ended up that way.)

Consider: "critiquing unstated social assumptions is fraught with false positives. While we sometimes manage to expose and elucidate bias and regressive ideology, oftentimes the critique "game" comes off as wrath-inducing charlatanism. And then, of course, the whole fiedl gets shit dumped on it by the people it's critiquing."