What is your why for writing fiction?
As the great Viktor Frankl said, if you give a person a why they can find any how.
Making fiction is a calling that requires a thoroughly grounded why.
This writing life is hard. If you want fame or fortune then rejections are normal, obscurity is nearly guaranteed. Hell, even the process of making fiction can be demoralizing, forget even making it well.
How many of you have banged out a few hundred to thousands of words on your keyboard completely assured that the muse has been moving through you only to open the laptop the next day and see that everything you poured out is completely unusable?
I know I have. But that’s exactly the moment where my why activates.
You’ll notice, if you’re in one of the NotMFA workshop or you read my craft essays, that I’ve been using the phrase making fiction instead of writing fiction.
I’m doing this on purpose. For me, writing fiction is too depersonalized. It’s like casting spells that you aren’t ready for.
Making fiction, like a carpenter makes a table or a potter makes a vase, is something more concrete and-more vitally-repeatable.
Got a flat scene?
Instead of smashing my computer screen and going to the fridge for a beer, hoping that after a long night of sweating blood and prayers to the writing gods that the morning will break with fresh inspiration, I take a deep breath and reread to make sure that I have a turn in the scene.
Often, I don’t find one. More often, I immediately know what to do to make that scene turn.
How about lifeless dialogue?
Sure, I can wait for the Holy Spirit to zap right through me and throw me writhing on the floor with new and sharper character interactions frothing out of me in hopes that my wife or kid will be there to take dictation as I convulse.
Better yet, I ask myself a few questions like: what does this character want in this moment? What are the willing to do to get it? What can they say right now that will make that happen?
I return to the skills I’ve built over years to solve the problems I’ve created for myself. I make solutions happen.
My why is the tinkering, the tweaking, the stress testing and poking of the fiction I’ve made.
It doesn’t matter how many books I sell, the size of publisher’s advances, how much media coverage I can spin up, or any of those important but not life giving aspects of fiction. I write because I like making and constantly remaking my fiction.
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Originally published at https://www.notmfa.com on March 8, 2022.
