I’m working on a strange longform writing project, and I hover between two states of being about it:
- HOW on earth am I going to weave together all the ideas I’m interested in??
- WHAT IF my project is boring and derivative??
It isn’t hard to discern that these two fears are a little bit incompatible with one another, for if the project were in fact boring and derivative, then weaving together the ideas together wouldn’t be all that hard, and vice versa. But I’m a dialectical thinker now, so I have no problem holding them both. Ha!
But seriously though, in an effort to inoculate myself against both these fears, I’ve been meaning for a while to gather the books I’m working in conversation with and take a picture of them. To remind myself that it’s pretty unlikely that anyone else is working with this same combination of ideas. And if I can arrange them in some kind of resonance with the baffling flow of thoughts in my head, then maybe I’ll start to see how the idea-weaving needs to happen.
Anyway, here are some of the books, in some kind of order! I’m pretty excited about this project now 🙂
Ambika Kamath 