May 17, 2005
Writing
It has been said that there is something dishonest about writing fiction. You can say anything and expect to get away with it, no responsibility.
On the other hand, writing nonfiction is of the essence of responsibility. You have to say something. When you do, you have to expect to take your licks. I am mostly a nonfiction writer. So if, say, when I call up my rector and get the parish secretary and identify myself, she seems always to say, “Is it anything?”
The main criticism fiction writers get is not so much what they say or how outrageous it may be, but more the way they say it, whether they’re a “good writer” or not. They also say often somewhat resentfully (though they’re probably right) that truth is stranger than fiction, so like anything alien, it always catches more attention. Unlike fiction, truth’s not so much taken for granted. Nobody asks about truth, except things like, What else is new? or What did you have to go and say that for? Questions like this are truly dispiriting for the nonfiction writer.
But some people do discredit fiction. For example, they’ll put down something by saying, Oh, that’s just a figment of your imagination, like there’s no possibility for truth and imagination having anything in common.
A figment, remember, is supposedly some feigned fantasy having no basis in reality, save, of course, that before there’s any possibility of either fantasy or feigning, it does more or less require a human being to be involved. That is, without humans being, reality doesn’t have, might we say, much of a leg to stand on. And being human, it seems to me, is mostly about as much grounded in reality as one could imagine, with some exceptions, of course.