Singular Cerebrations: My Paranormal Attention Span

This is me, but, you know, with the paranormal.

Emily and I are writing our first book this year, and the hardest part for me is going to be concentrating on one thing for so long.  I have a paranormal attention span somewhere between a goldfish and my dog at the dog park--in other words, not good.  There are so many fascinating subjects to be studied that I have real difficulty concentrating on just one for any length of time.  I mean, wasn't it Fort himself that said "One measures a circle beginning anywhere?"  I take that to mean that each area of the paranormal informs our understanding of every other area, and to focus exclusively on any one area is to blind oneself to the larger reality.

I just want to be able to see the forest, instead of being distracted by trees.  The other side of that coin, though, is that flitting from subject to subject won't ever garner enough specialized knowledge to be able to apply anything useful to further subjects.  It's no more helpful to forget that the forest is largely composed of trees than it is to lose the forest in favor of them.  So I'm left to find a happy medium.  And I think I can do that.  I've been talking to some friends lately, and I've received some very helpful advice.  I won't repeat it all here, for the sake of brevity, but it boils down to this: I can do both.  That's the best thing about the fortean field of study.  It's all so wonderfully weird and complicated that you can't really separate it, at least not much.  

So let's say Emily and I start with a book on Madison's haunted places.  That's plenty weird, and maybe it won't include many monster sightings (a personal favorite), but that doesn't mean a haunted site or two won't be associated with any.  And that's the beauty of it all.  I couldn't escape Fort's circle even if I wanted to, and if I just keep reminding myself of that, then I think we can all look forward to a few very fun books in the future.

Yours in Impossibility,

Tobias