I apologize for not contributing a new blog to this column in such a long time. In all honesty, I have been consumed. When the writing of my novel titled (ironically enough) The Heavenly Exile took flight over the summer, the urgency of blogging shrank until it became completely unimportant to me. The blog wasn't the only thing which I swapped from its rightful position of priority in my life; the importance of my schoolwork and grades diminished to a point where I cannot return to Lipscomb University after this semester.
These, among others, are the side effects of my fiction writing. They are the pollution of my favorite pastime. However, even knowing the consequences, I continue writing. I write because it is one of the few activities in my life I truly love.
Fiction writing, despite the preface above, has benefited me in some ways. It's been said that fiction is the closest thing we have to magic. It allows me the unrestrained freedom to express myself, it allows my imagination regular exercise, and it allows me to shamelessly answer that beloved question "What if...?" Writing has a very seductive appeal to me. Nothing else rivals the satisfaction of physically holding a completed piece of prose (especially a novel) in my hands. Even editing can be fun.
For all its cathartic intentions, there are negative sides to writing. I easily lose track of things while I labor on a story. Not only do hours disappear, but most of my life, previously regulated by reality, belongs less to me and more to my fictional fantasies. One could argue I don't really live at all while I write. I think I do live. I live through my creations: my protagonists, the fictitious worlds they inhabit, and events they experience. I pour my energy into their lives. But what is left for me afterward, in my life outside of writing? What is left of the life I neglected in the meantime? Is it possible to care about schoolwork and "loved" ones if all my emotions are now property of these parasites that do not and never will exist?
Another thing I've realized is how easily the line between my reality and my fiction can blur or vanish entirely. Any story, fiction or otherwise, requires conflict in order to maintain the audience's interest. The writer's job is to create the conflict, to imagine it in the way which makes the story as compelling as possible. I try my hardest to keep my stories fresh and interesting, but tend to romanticize my own life. I try (with only some success) to remind myself that I am not a literary character, and my life is not some epic novel. It takes even more constant reminders to recognize that people and things which get between me and my thousand-words-a-day are not scheming antagonists I must defeat in a battle of the word processor.
I love writing, even knowing the downsides. Call me a selfish bastard, but something about it brings me back again and again. It could be an addiction, I don't know, but the last thing I want to do is call it that.
I plan on beginning a new short story today. My stories are like miniature treasures. I love them so much. If people like me, or what's left of me, I hope they like them, too.
