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What Is Fiction? The Problem of Defining Reality

April 8, 2024

creativity, fiction, literature, reality, society, writing

I love deceptively simple questions. “What is fiction?” definitely counts because, on the surface, it appears childishly obvious. One might say “Fiction is writing stories that aren’t real”, or something of the sort. Probably you couldn’t even entirely disagree with that. And yet, this is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

Obviously enough, if we want to talk about fiction and reality (aren’t they, after all, supposed to be antonyms?) there are special cases, too. “What is fiction?” seems to have a different answer if we offered as an example fantasy fiction, and yet a different one if we talked about, say, historical fiction. And what about memoirs? Not to mention the crazy notion (of yours truly) that all books are autobiographical.

The problem of comprehensively answering the question “What is fiction?” boils down to two main issues:

Who is the author of a work?
What is reality?

I told you, I love deceptively simple questions. “The author of a work is the person who wrote it, you dummy!” I hear someone telling me. The same person might even roll their eyes hearing me asking what is reality.

But, as you will see in this post, neither of these questions has a clear answer. And this complicates our attempt to answer “what is fiction?” as well. Though worry not, I’ll face the challenge!

“What is fiction?” is not a question that can be answered with recourse to whether it depicts reality or not, but whether it’s predicated on **affect**

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Strengths and Weaknesses as a Writer: a Pointless Question

March 11, 2024

Writing

art, creativity, fiction, genre, writing

3 comments

I recently had a hilarious (as it turned out) experience in a professional capacity. A Gothic writer wanted to hire a freelancer and I was one of the candidates. One of the interview questions was, What are your strengths and weaknesses as a writer?

On the surface, there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with this question. Lazy recruiters have been using this for a long time and equally lazy and conformist candidates have been giving nice canned responses.

The thing is, al this falls apart once fiction writing enters the picture.

So this ridiculous experience – I’ll offer you more details in a while – inspired me to write this post, to clarify why What are your strengths and weaknesses as a writer? is a profoundly pointless question. Any writing adviser, guru, coach, or whatnot who tries to sell you a course or method to “fix your writing weaknesses” is just after your money.

strengths and weaknesses as a writer, AI render of a dystopian city made of files and folders — Those who are dead set on finding “strength and weakness” in everything, will end up living in a city made of files, folders, and boxes.

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The Storytelling Cat – or, OK, I Lied

February 19, 2024

Fiction

art, book, creativity, fiction, literature, novel, writing

2 comments

Last December I said I’d likely never write another novel. And what did I start doing before a month had passed? Writing another novel. Never say never and all that. The story of how this novel, The Storytelling Cat, came to be would make for an interesting essay on creativity and art in itself.

Later in this post I’ll explain more about the creation process, together with info on how to get the novel – a free download is of course available – but for now there’s something intriguing you should know: This book is unlike any other I’ve written; there’s a lot of peculiarity involved.

That the protagonist is a cat with human knowledge is the least odd thing about this book.

The storytelling cat book cover — The cover of *The Storytelling Cat* is one of my favorites (of my own books, that is), though I’m not objective. You see, I painted it myself!

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