Why can’t I write fiction?

As I mentioned a few blog posts ago I’ve been reading John Leax’s book “Grace is Where I Live”. I’ve been reading it pretty inconsistently, just a bit here and there, but when I have read it I’ve quite enjoyed it. One of the things I’ve really enjoyed about it is that I can really relate to it a lot. Leax writes about being a developing writer and struggling with the difficulties of writing. One place where I feel very much akin to Leax is that when it comes to writing I simply cannot write in the genre and style I really most want to. Both Leax and I dream of writing good fiction, of writing fictitious stories with real meaning and powerful messages. Leax struggled with fiction and ended up primarily writing poetry, despite finally doing at least one good novel. I also struggle terribly with fiction, but rather than poetry I end up primarily doing this. Some would call it prose, others personal essays. I’ve always known it just as blogging, writing. But it seems my best writing is just straight prose about my thoughts and my life.

I’ve tried writing fiction. I was already writing about vampires long before Twilight became popular, but then once Stephanie Mayer stole my mythical creature I couldn’t really do that anymore. Not that much of my vampire scribbles were very good. Then I had this idea of a thief/assassin who was either so good he was evil or so evil he was good or some such nonsense, but I didn’t get more than two pages into that before I decided it was crap. Then I had a few pages about some roguish guy who saves a girl who keeps a dagger hidden between her breasts and tries to kill him before realizing they can work together, in love, to save the world…Dang, I am so cliché. And I haven’t even mentioned my sci-fi idea about the virus that turns people into zombies. That got a few paragraphs before its rather timely death. Then recently I’ve had this idea of psychic soldiers, or some guy who gets experimented on by the government and goes on a super human rampage of revenge or some such. My fiction is the very definition of cliché. But then even if it weren’t it is still so dead.

When I write prose it’s alive. At least I like to think so, and people read it so I guess it must have some gasping remnants of life in it. I find it easy to put life into my prose because I am alive, and the world I live in is alive, and the people and ideas I write about are alive, so if I wrote about my life, my world, and the things in that sphere of life than my writing just naturally comes alive. But when I write fiction I have to create life. There is no original life to draw on. I have people that were born in my mind and fed by my imagination, and a world, whether Earth or not, which exists only within my feeble brain. So it ends up being all scripted, sounding so fake and disgusting. How do Orson Scott Card, J.K. Rowling, J.R.R. Tolkien, and P.G. Wodehouse make their characters live? I also have so much trouble with writing with anything outside my experience. I can’t write about magic or machine guns when I’ve never used them. I can’t write about life in medieval world because I live in the modern one. In the end I just can’t write about someone unless I know them as well as myself, which leaves me trapped to write only about myself. Dang I’m selfish.

At the beginning of this post I spoke about Dr. Leax’s book “Grace is Where I Live” and now I’m going to quote from it a little, because I think he does a much better time of explaining some of this. In his essay “Telling Affirmation” Leax quotes Flannery O’Connor as saying that part of the problem with beginning fiction writers is that “They are apt to be reformers and to want to write because they are possessed not by a story but by the bare bones of some abstract notion. They are conscious of problems, not people…” I think that’s my problem. I want to write about the problem of the internal struggle between good and evil, about the choices that make us what we are. I want to fully explore what a human is and write the heights we can rise to and the depths we can fall to. I want to write about the problems of society, of corruption and naivety. I want to write about these things being overcome and broken. I have the bare bones of some notion and I want to write about it, and I want to write fiction, and I want that fiction to be enjoyable and meaningful and to make people think and to change their lives. I know these problems, but I don’t know people.

I don’t take criticism well. There are very few people who I can truly accept criticism from when it comes to writing, even if it does tick me off a little that I have to accept it. But one criticism which I have received both from one of the few professors at Houghton I accept criticism from and from Jenny (whose criticism I am most likely to be gracious about even though part of me still wants to think I’m perfect) is that I lack empathy. I wrote a lot last semester about Israel and Palestine and I wrote with cold logic. But I have two people saying that cold logic doesn’t leave room for the feelings of people, for the emotions of us unpredictable and fickle humans. Maybe logically what some of Israel’s actions are wrong, some downright war crimes. But they aren’t just doing it because they are evil people, because they really aren’t, they are doing it for human reasons. Those reasons may be wrong (this is highly debatable), but I need to have empathy, I need to be willing and able to see their reasons, understand those reasons, and try to see things from their point of view, regardless of how I personally feel. I need empathy.

Next semester I’m taking a fiction class. This should be interesting, because I really do struggle with fiction. I hope I’ll do well in that class. I think I will, as long as I work hard and really try to learn empathy and the skills needed for good fiction writing. I dream of writing a book that will have meaning, a story that people will enjoy. I hope I can make that dream come true. Well, at least I have a goal to work towards. And I’m not without hope. I have successfully written fiction once, if only once. It was a six page short story which I’ve kept pretty close to my heart ever since. Maybe someday I can write more fiction. Or maybe, like Leax, I will primarily be known for the style of writing that came naturally. Writing like this really does come naturally, and maybe I will someday publish some sort of prose non-fiction ramblings. It would be nice. By the way, act now and get a signed copy of my first book…once it’s published! ;-) That’s years in the future, but my oldest fans (all you crazy blog reading people) will definitely be honored. Yeah, I dream big. Anyway, that’s enough non-fiction personal essay prose for now, I think I’m going to go do something that won’t have me brooding on my lack of fiction writing ability…