Before even considering specific project ideas, the big question for me is whether to pursue primarily a creative project, or a traditional paper. Probably the way to make this decision would be to consider how each option aligns with my career goals — which, unhelpfully, are also in flux. So at this point, I think the wisest course would be to choose the project that’s most conceptually exciting to me, and figure out the career element later. This path definitely points me in the direction of a creative project.
As I sit down to write, my natural inclination is to take the blank page (blog) and impose a narrative structure on it — probably comes of too much novel-writing. But I think it may actually work out, in a loose sense, to organize my Narrative Futures experience into chapters and acts and, hopefully, a forward trajectory in which the strands of inquiry and personal arcs eventually come together in the final project. So I think the way to start is with a prologue, ideally the kind of prologue that sets context and establishes some of the big questions of the piece, not the kind of prologue that makes critique partners/professors/editors comment, “This is why prologues should be outlawed!”
