Writing-to-think

I’ve spent several days this past month organizing the some-odd 2,000 stickers I’ve collected in Berlin since 2004 and coming up with an outline of sorts with which to begin writing.  The organizing process itself was extremely illuminating, esp. as I begin to do the same with another few thousand stickers from NYC.  For one thing, I’m finding far fewer similarities than I expected – far fewer.  The next phase is what I call writing-to-think.  Not all that original, yadda yadda, but it’ll do.  I’ve team-taught writing to first-year students on-and-off, and with the work I do as a gallery director, I always encourage artists and writers to come up with that killer first sentence to draw in one’s audience.  Here is one from James Howard Kunstler’s most recent post “The Jobs Picture” from his Clusterfuck Nation that can’t be beat.  This guy can dance through a straw with his writing.

The clarion cries of “recovery” cut painfully through the crisp pre-Christmas air while the now-perpetually unemployed huddle in their tents around the Sacramento delta, and the state AGs slug it out with the foreclosure goons, and not a few mortgage payment drop-outs enjoy luxury living in McMansions with no monthly carrying costs, and the minions of Goldman Sachs (with fellow squids) groom their beaks waiting for the massive chum slick of bonus checks to be dropped by helicopters in this the third holiday season since Wall Street committed suicide by an overdose of Ponzi.

Brilliant.  Or nuts.  Or neither.  Or both.

I love writing.  This will be great fun.