Take a story's temperature by studying its tone. Is it hopeful? Cynical? Snarky? Playful?
Introspective
It doesn't get much more introspective than spending so much time alone in a cabin in the woods that you start to wonder if you're walking on the sky. Just sayin'.
Picture this: You read a lot of books. You write a lot of note cards with excerpts. You end up with such a huge stack of note cards, such a pile of things to ponder, that you lock yourself away, pondering and writing like a maniac for sixteen hours a day. You waste away and live on soda.
That's exactly what Annie Dillard did (okay, minus the soda…). Here's a glimpse at her mental state as she observes and considers her environment:
It is spring. I plan to try to control myself this year, to watch the progress of the season in a calm and orderly fashion. In spring I am prone to wretched excess. I abandon myself to flights and compulsions; I veer into various states of physical disarray. (7.6)
This is, in fact, a book made of flights and compulsions—it follows Dillard's wandering eye. What saves Pilgrim at Tinker Creek from being boring navel-gazing, though, is the originality and depth of Dillard's thoughts and associations. Here's another example:
The tulip-tree leaf reminded me of a newborn mammal I'd seen the other day, one of the neighborhood children's gerbils […] Its skin was hairless except for an infinitesimal set of whiskers; the skin seemed as thin as the membrane of an onion, tightly packed as a sausage casing, and bulging roundly with wet, bloody meat. (7.16)
However you might feel about wet, bloody meat, you've got to admit this is someone who's observed the heck out of a gerbil. She's pondered everything she sees, and she's seen it more deeply than most of us. This is what makes her thoughts interesting, and what keeps introspection from sinking into self-absorption.