I started this blog for a couple of reasons. The main one, of course, was that I wanted to share my thoughts on things that interest me with anyone who cared to read what I had to say. But another was as a kind of writing workout, to address some of my weaknesses as a writer. For example, I tend to be more of an editor than a writer, meaning I will go back and rewrite and rewrite and rewrite and polish, rather than actually finishing anything. So one of the exercises of this blog has been to just go ahead and post something for all to see, without waiting for it to be perfect (which it never ever will be).
My output here has dropped off somewhat, but for what I consider to be a good reason. I started writing a novel many years ago, and as it progressed, the urgency of finishing it has become greater and greater. I've had a good many ideas for blog posts, and my drafts folder still has about 40 titles in various stages of completion, but whenever I sit down to work on them, I realize I really should be finishing that novel instead. Now that I have finally finished the first draft, I can take a bit of a break from that urgency, and share some thoughts here again. In this post, the thoughts I'm going to share are about writing fiction.
I have found writing fiction to be immensely harder than writing the kinds of essays I've posted here, and for two main reasons.
First, it's just more work. When I'm writing an essay, I have to formulate a thesis, structure an argument, compose each sentence and each paragraph to flow from inference to inference so that the reader will be carried along towards the conclusions I've reached myself. In doing this, I need to choose which facts to include and which facts to ignore as irrelevant.
In fiction, I have to do all of this, plus I have to make up the facts. And that's not at all an easy thing to do. The novel I've been working on is in the fantasy genre (which is to say it's set in a world based on medieval Europe with some elements that could be described as magical), which you might think would make it easy since anything goes, but that's just not so. The facts have to fit together to create a coherent, believable world. The characters have to react to those facts in a way that properly advances the plot and develops the theme. All of this happens naturally in non-fiction, because we live in a world that already obeys natural law and there is a consistent reality that takes care of itself. In fiction you have to build it from scratch, and that's a lot of work.
Second, fiction is art, and I can't help but feel kind of self-conscious about putting out something to be admired for its aesthetic qualities. The essays I write here are about ideas, and I try to make my writing as transparent as possible, so that the ideas are front and center. I may occasionally include what I think are clever or elegant turns of phrase, but ultimately they're supposed to be there in support of the ideas, rather than to be admired in their own right.
I don't feel self-conscious about the ideas because ideas don't belong to me; they're not my creations. Sometimes, I might have thoughts that no one else seems to have thought of before (or at least which don't seem to be in wide circulation yet), but I never feel as if I have created them. It's more like I've discovered them, like I just happen to have been lucky enough to notice something that was there to be noticed by whoever happened to look in the right direction in the right light. I'm happy to share these things un-self-consciously, but fiction? In fiction I'm saying, "Here's a world and some characters and a sequence of events that I created and I think they're good enough for you to devote some attention to." And I feel really awkward about doing that.
I'm not finished with this blog, not by a long shot. I still have lots of things I'll be wanting to write about here, and insights from struggling with fiction just adds to that list.
