Love Me, Love My Fiction
Because I’m going to keep writing it regardless
I’ve been a liar my whole life. I began making up stories before I could read.
That’s what stories are, you know. Lies. Stuff we make up. Stuff we create as if we’re little gods. We create universes. We create lives and intertwine them and ping them into the stratosphere only to shoot them down and mourn them. It’s part of our hard-wiring and, even with every bit of conditioning and pressure and undermining that starts from the moment we move our first crayon outside the line, we remain storytellers. Listen to any guy embellishing the events of last night’s game or any kid with his skateboard describing in gory detail that latest wipeout. See? If you’re a human being you’re telling stories.
However, not all of us write our stories down. In fact, not many of us do percentage-wise. There’s a reason for that and part of it is that undermining that starts when we’re very young. But it’s also because it’s hard to do.
Sure, that first sentence or paragraph may float up from some providential sub-consciousness but then what are you supposed to do with it? With every word, you’re creating a logical structure that you have to adhere to and if you make any changes, be prepared for the whole thing to collapse. Not only do you have to maintain this fragile fantasy so that it stays airborne, you also have to make it interesting, engaging, entertaining. Good luck.
Those of us who keep writing stories, as in made-up fictional didn’t-actually-happen stories, are doing it in spite of ourselves. Writing fiction is not sensible. It’s not useful. It’s (probably) not going to get us rich and it’s not even as if there’s a significant readership for it. You want to see some seriously insane view/read ratios? Write fiction. G’head. Give it your best shot.
And if people aren’t reading the three-minute reads, they’re really not up for the 29-minute reads!
So why bother?
For quite some time I’ve focused more on writing personal essays on this platform for obvious reasons.
But writing fiction and even reading (really well-crafted) fiction does something that the most expertly written non-fiction can’t ever accomplish. We’re talking flight and nourishment and exploration and identification and sitting-on-the-edge-of-your-seatism that only happens in fiction. But not all fiction. Let’s be really clear on this point. In fact, the magic doesn’t happen in most fiction whether you’re reading it or writing. As to the reading, that’s not even something we can rely on the gatekeepers for because there are a confusing number of people who read John Updike (really?).
Striking gold in writing fiction is rarer than striking gold by digging in the ground. But once you’ve hit even a minor vein of the stuff, it’s an addiction that can’t be cured. Here’s my first taste:
The sickness hits again
Even though I know it’s a fool’s errand, I find myself drawn to writing fiction again. Back in January, I undertook a daily writing project called The Obituaries of January. Each day I’d write a fictional obituary about a fictional person, inventing a life that never happened and achievements never achieved. Then I’d kill them. They weren’t exactly a runaway hit.
And, to be honest, that project got to be a bit of a grind. Inventing as interesting a life as I could imagine and then killing it off? The fun wore off pretty quickly there. But I’m one bull-headed writer and I finished the month with 31 fictional obituaries, all of which probably earned me roughly three bucks (It’s the principle of the thing, dammit).
The urge will not be denied and September has found my partner and I writing new short pieces of fiction to go along with each of the evocative and lovely collage pieces he created in August. And, so here we go again, putting our brains and egos and imaginations on the line in pursuit of that elusive high that can only be attained through some obscure combination of words.
We’re calling the project Our Hours and have made sure the work lives somewhere besides this platform:
Clearly I’m not in this for the money or fame
There’s something else going on that defies the normal objectives associated with most human endeavors. But writing and/or creating art of any kind flies in the face of normal anything. To put significant amounts of time and effort into something that few will probably ever experience is the very definition of creator.
Aren’t I lucky to have you reading this, though? That right there is reason enough for me to come back to the page, day in and day out, and face down the ever-present voices that say this is a dumb waste of time.
It’s not. Thank you.
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