Paranoia can be a sign of a sanity in some circumstances, in some places and times.
Novels seem to exist because of this need to know and connect, and so story becomes charged with necessity.
We can't write a serious novel in the 21st century without acknowledging the inescapable self-awareness we're stuck with. The idea we're surrounded by falsehoods and lies. It's hard for the thinking person to believe in narratives. And yet we want some place to invest our belief.
I love poetry, read it a lot, but make no claim to being able to write it.
Toronto is hard to capture in a few strokes.
There's some evidence that before events of mass trauma, even unpredictable ones, people begin to feel higher anxiety, often expressed in terms specific to the event.