from the pen of icarus blake

Daily writing prompt

What is one word that describes you?

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I get the marketing appeal of compressing yourself into a single concept.  It makes your self presentation easy, prompts you to lean on whatever one attribute you’ve reduced yourself to.  It’s like a pocket resume: here’s me.  Here’s all you need to know.

As a writer, though, I recoil from that.  I can certainly say that my main character is a “detective,” that his main character trait is “perceptive,” but doing so misses all of the additional work I’ve put into his character and the subtler turns of personality that make a story tick.  I hate marketable.  I like messy.

But, I do understand the need.  So if I am reducing myself for a wide audience, then I choose the subtitle “Thoughtful.”