This is a piece of fiction that I should be writing right now but haven't even though it's slightly past midnight and I still have one post to go before I cover up yesterday's posts. I'm only a day behind in scheduled posts which is pretty great because two days ago I was backed up by four days. So tomorrow morning I can get a couple of posts for today out, and in the afternoon I'll be all caught up.
What is fiction anyway? What's so great about it. If the purpose of fiction is escapism, people escape to scarier places than reality, or people escape from 'reality' without the use of fiction, so that can't be just it. What does a creator get out of the act of fiction-writing? An ability to create a universe of her own liking and inhabitants who are her own creation. What goes in there goes through you, though not necessarily the direction you want it to go. Writers often consider themselves to be mere channeling mechanisms for the pieces that get put down into words. So fiction-writing is then a way for the writer to enjoy channeling the non-existent and non-real to merely existent and unreal. It's a sort of magical power to create something -- a lot of something -- with nothing. It's different from other works of art, movies studio art performance art, because all you need here is your brain and some form of expression...through fingers or mouths. Fiction-writing is literal magic, and it makes the magicians involved feel great.
Like a good piece of shit though, it's difficult to get it out sometimes even though it'd lead to great relief if it did. And that's what's happening right now. I know it'd be good if I wrote something that wasn't real and created characters and interactions and new worlds. I can't though. So we're stuck here with navel-gazing.
Such is our existence.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Tell me what you think. I'll read, promise.