Home For Fiction – Blog

Time flies like an arrow (fruit flies like a banana). It was exactly two years ago when the first post of the Home for Fiction blog appeared. A lot has happened since. The blog itself has grown a lot in terms of readership, and I’ve made apps, I’ve written books, and I’ve even composed music – I certainly didn’t expect that when I began this journey.

Ultimately, however, I’m definitely not the kind of person who focuses on numbers. I’m a fiction writer, after all, and writing fiction is not about accurate figures, but about abstract beauty.

And so, to put it bluntly, I write and code what I feel like, and I simply do not care about audience receptionAren’t you disgusted when you see creators - writers, coders, painters - begging their audience? Few things are more pathetic than degrading yourself for audience reception (be it in terms of attention or money), and that’s especially the case when dealing with audiences plagued by unfathomable stupidity. I have basically stopped responding to so-called reviews left for my Android apps, because I’m exhausted by dealing with people complaining that… the app is coded in English, not their native language..

Presently, I feel like blogging and coding. However, both the blog and the Android apps might disappear one day, if I feel they no longer serve their creative purpose.

We can’t discover new oceans if we don’t have the courage to lose sight of the shore.

Home for Fiction’s raison d’ Être

As I mentioned just above, the reasons behind creating Home for Fiction revolved around abstraction and creativity that, in our context, are inherently selfish processes. And so, although I’m genuinely happy that people have found Home for Fiction useful, I won’t insult your intelligence by claiming my primary motivation has been anything other than self-centered. Creation is an eminently egotistic endeavor.

Selfish, self-centered, egotistic…

In our epoch – and particularly in a digital media context – this is invariably connected with money. Money, money, money, money, more, more, more, more. Everyone seems to be out there to make money on someone else’s expense – that’s capitalism, for you.

Oh, and I’ve grown disgusted by the verb monetize. Apparently nowadays everything is for sale and everything exists solely to be squeezed money from. Again, that’s capitalism for you.

The… income presently generated by Home for Fiction (mostly deploying ads in the Android apps) is a meager amount that just about covers domain & hosting expenses.(At some point I became so disgusted by stupidity that I said, enough is enough).

If money were the most important thing to me, my PhD could’ve found me some job in some university around the world paying $6000 a month. Indeed, in certain… “special” countries the amount is even higher – all you have to do is check your ethics at the door.

But I’m weird. To me, there are things much more important than money.

At the same time, I would be a damned liar if I claimed I wouldn’t be happy if I could combine doing something I care about with paying the bills. Yet I have no expectations. Even with zero blog subscribers or app users, I’ll still continue producing content, if that’s what I feel like doing. Conversely, even if Home for Fiction were making thousands of $$$, I’d still pull the plug the moment I felt limited and uninspired.

In the end, it all comes down to this: To which extent are you willing to debase yourself for money? Or, to see the other side of it, to which extent do you value your intellectual liberty?

Creative Independence Is Priceless

One thing you might not know, though I might have mentioned it, is that the birth of this blog coincides almost perfectly (3 days apart) with the successful defense of my doctoral dissertation.

In case you wonder why I’m telling you this, that’s because I knew already finishing my doctoral studies and getting a PhD what I wanted to do – or, to put another spin on it, what I didn’t want to do.

I didn’t want to have my creativity (and my life) put in a bourgeois box with a golden ribbon and some fairy dust sprinkled on top. Frankly, the idea of intellectual entombment makes me feel sick.

We all think we’re special, but in the end our lives are just an almost hopeless attempt to escape the beast called conformity. That’s what I want, more than any riches and any glory.

I want to discover new oceans. I’m still discovering new oceans, two years after that first post, with every shore I leave behind.

What else is there but discovering?