Why Write Fiction
An exhortation
For the human brain fiction is default. Or so I like to believe.
I’ve come to see essays as what follows after a realization and fiction as the dramatization of reaching such realizations. One ends and the other begins. But it is not necessary that the two say the same things. In fact, if you try diligently to get an “epiphany” down on paper, it can look misshapen and incorrect. It might turn out to be little more than romantic spontaneity. But that does not mean the epiphany itself was false. Some things just get translated into logic space less agreeingly. This defiance of the instinctual against being reduced is perhaps what gives it its power: imagine unbridled subconscious versus its shadow on the brain wall.
Among the two, the dramatization of getting there interests me far more than the making sense of it afterward. I believe the former to be much more expansive and interpretative than the latter, which, to be effective, has to tame itself into neat claims and conclusions, which isn’t always possible. Realistically, essays are equally—if not more—important, but mining for truthful images from a narrative mess drafted feverishly over days or weeks is perhaps—just—a slightly higher calling. Or, again, that is what I like to believe.
Reaching in the dark
The strongest appeal to writing fiction is probably the promise to perpetuity. We remember stories and might just remember the writers. But the biggest reason to write fiction should be that it allows you unchecked access to yourself. Of course this is as cliched as it gets. Writing has for ever been associated with thinking and untangling thoughts. But nowhere is this self-revelatory apparatus as sharp, I’d argue, as when writing fiction.
Could there be a better way to get closer to the self than trying to pull out a narrative from a mental image that accretes in your brain over leisurely pockets of thought? What else in your average day do you do to look into the blinding core of yourself? Pulling the narrative out of whatever dells and corners in the brain they have scuttled to and then going through the draft accumulating atomic changes until it all sounds and flows right to the same brain—could anything else really get you closer to the ghost in the machine? Not for nothing do you see links and glaringly obvious threads and connections in a story after months of having written it. Fiction is often so subconsciously produced that you notice having stolen things from everything that made an impression on you: another writer’s work, exact phrases unknowingly lifted, months-old versions of you that saw certain things, sounds, colors, people you know, people you don’t, all the things that made a mark on you due to their rarity in your day and their unpredictability.
In addition, fiction, unlike other kinds of writing like essays, criticism, non-fiction narrative, even to some extent poetry, has few constraints. Perhaps the practicalities of publication slap on some of those, but fiction does not necessitate a heavily consistent framework. This is unlike criticism writing, where an inconsistent slip would be a serious gaffe, or investigative writing, where the piece’s credibility strains and buckles under a single compromised claim. What this loosening of constraints allows is the subconscious to hugely extend its reach. And the more the subconscious, frankly, the more the self.
We need more fiction
All of this reaching just to make enough room to say Nepali people do not write enough fiction. Or in any case do not publish enough. There used to be a time when the scene here was livelier: Saturday fiction and poetry issues in the newspapers, literary magazines more active, overall a better environment for non-professional writers. Now it has dried up and it feels like a desert. Or is this just nostalgia speaking?
We need more fiction because the fiction output of a period of time is, simply, how that time leaves its mark in history and culture. We read the Russians and can imagine the late 19th century. We read the great Indian novelists describe the Emergency and get a glimpse into that time. We read about the Song Tra Bong and Salem cigarettes preferred by Viet Cong soldiers and are in on the stupidity of the whole enterprise. Nothing else from a time is a handier yardstick than the literature it produces. Perhaps films too now, but the technological advancement aspect dates films rather quickly, and they are also constantly unhelpfully remade. Less handy are, of course, wars, like the Civil War in our own recent history. But we don’t want more of those.
I consider myself not well read enough in Nepali literature to make up my mind on the quality and general direction of it, but we have never really been known as a literature-producing country. And this is not going to change unless we actually start writing. And the thing about writing fiction is that you need to do it to see how to do it. No amount of reading is going to get you there. You have to write and suck at it and learn to put it away and write some more having learned a number of important things from the experience. And repeat this for many times before you can get to one good story. (Trying to get there myself.)
Circle one or more
Write fiction not necessarily to be a Chekhov or an Alice Munro or whoever your favorite writer is. You’ll get there if you are disciplined enough and it could turn out to be a long long journey. But what you write today does not need to be excellent. You pit your work against the best there is and that hurts your output, which hurts your chances of getting there. Also, pace your reading and writing carefully or that’s another paralysis. This is more serious than people usually make it.
Write fiction to arrive at understandings of yourself. Much less daunting. If you feel that your actions on the day to day are too automatic and simple, lacking in motive, see if you cannot make your characters act differently and perhaps you will understand something about yourself. Who cares if the result isn’t smart and ironic and illustrative of a way of life? Let’s just get the story done. Listen to your brain transmitting a mute image and try giving it language. If it fails, there’s surely another equally beautiful image you haven’t given enough attention to. Surely two thousand words a month isn’t too much to ask of yourself. Start with an image, then find ways to get the characters around the image, write out their thoughts, separately, the causality in the narrative has to be casual, then put it all together, and then put it away. Come back and see if it had anything. If not, discard. The next one will.
Write fiction not to “exercise empathy” or whatever virtuous else people recommend doing it for. Do not fool yourself. You’re only ever writing about yourself even when you think you’re writing about others. And anyway, you cannot know anyone past a reasonable threshold except yourself. Anything that tries to make writing fiction look like an altruistic act should be put in the trash.
Write fiction because it is a very human thing to do, for which literally everything else in your life is a preparation. Inexhaustible simple intelligence is on tap now at $20 per month. Shallow thinking might not make it past the year. It’ll still be some time before machines start writing gasp-inducing masterpieces but they will get close. Even then we should keep in mind that they are only approximating, that they haven’t felt it. But you have. That should be enough reason for you.
Write fiction not to meet expectations or to represent anything. Just sit down and create characters and make them do things and see where it takes you. It will always—on the condition that you earnestly dedicate a non-trivial chunk of your time, which is without exaggeration the only thing you own—lead you someplace you will be ecstatic to have reached. It will also always be someplace you never quite imagined. Yes: every single time.
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Sharad Duwal is a short-story writer from Bhaktapur, Nepal.
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