In life, as in writing: When I don’t know where to start, which is always, I can start in the middle.

I feel like I need to start in an organized way. Have a beginning, middle, end, for everything. Be structured about it, with a valid starting point, in order for it to be right, or legitimate.

But I love it when books start in the middle, with a character in action, without introductions or background explanations. Don’t set the scene! Just throw me into it. I’ll figure out what matters.

It’s more interesting that way.

If I need the backstory, feed it to me slowly, drip it into the action, paint it in, little stripes at a time of somebody doing something.

Make it matter now, weave it around the present action.

Don’t force me to pause my interest in the present and jump backward in time for some explanation that leads up to where we are. And for the love of God don’t give me a flashback.

Those are my reading preferences. Interesting, given that I spend an inordinate amount of time cross-examining my own memories, reliving my own experiences, and writing about long-gone shit that’s happened to me.

I am obsessed with my own backstory but don’t have the patience for anyone else’s?

Am I just self-absorbed and egotistical and disinterested in others? I don’t think so. And I don’t feel that way in conversation. I fucking love it when a living breathing human fills me in on their backstory, sets the scene, fills in the blanks.

I hate it in fiction though, and even in memoir or autobiography, when there are paragraphs and paragraphs of explanation.

What I’m looking for is meaning in the present, distributed mostly in action. And outside of books, in conversations, interactions, there’s a tie to the present moment, there’s emotional connection, relevance, enthusiasm, vulnerability: real, now, here. When there isn’t, when someone’s just going on about something that doesn’t tie in somehow, it’s boring.

I want to live in moments, and I want to write about moments.

I don’t want to lead up to the moment or explain how I got to the moment. When I’m living, I want to live the moment. When I’m writing, I want to write the moment.