Jeremiah Tolbert

Of the many lines that stand out in Delany’s About Writing, this one in par­tic­u­lar keeps twist­ing itself around in my mind. 

Fiction is an intel­lec­tu­ally imag­i­na­tive act com­mit­ted on the mate­ri­als of mem­ory that tries for the form of history.

And then later:

It looks like the writer is telling you a story. What the writer is actu­ally doing, how­ever, is using words to evoke a series of micromem­o­ries from your own expe­ri­ence that inmix, join, and con­nect in your mind in an order the writer con­trols, so that, in effect, you have a sus­tained mem­ory of some­thing that never hap­pened to you.

That false mem­ory is what a story is.

If you had asked me prior to read­ing the above what a story does or is, I would have prob­a­bly said: “I don’t know… I guess it can do a lot of dif­fer­ent things.  It makes you feel emotions—short sto­ries do that par­tic­u­larly. Uh…” and then I would have trailed off.

I’ve put lit­tle thought into the nature of fic­tion itself because it always seemed self-​​evident to me.  I didn’t think I would have any­thing to learn from ask­ing what it is.  The les­son I’ve learned this week, from Delany (just one of many) is that by under­stand­ing what fic­tion and story is, I can under­stand my inner process more.  I under­stand fic­tion more.  It’s a small rev­e­la­tion that casts know­ing light into shad­ows, reveal­ing beau­ties that I hadn’t real­ized were there. 

If I were to hon­estly inter­ro­gate why I write, I would admit that I write for sev­eral rea­sons. They’re not all flat­ter­ing reveals either. 

First, I write to impress oth­ers with my clev­er­ness.  I’m writ­ing because I want oth­ers in the world to acknowl­edge me and my ideas.  That’s the self­ish, prim­i­tive rea­son. I’m writ­ing at least on one level to gar­ner atten­tion.  Maybe I didn’t get enough of it as a kid.  But a decent amount of plea­sure from writ­ing comes from know­ing when oth­ers have read it and enjoyed it.  I have a drive to be liked and appre­ci­ated, and writ­ing is how I attempt to sat­isfy it, partially.

Two, I write to fig­ure out who I am, and what’s inside of me.  So much of our brains and selves are locked up in the sub­con­scious.  My con­scious mind, in its desire to under­stand every­thing, works col­lab­o­ra­tively with the sub­con­scious on fiction—it’s the clos­est I can get to hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion between the two halves of mind. I say halves, but sub­con­scious might be more like 80% of our mind, and the con­scious 20%.  By writ­ing fic­tion, I tap into that mys­te­ri­ous part, like tap­ping a maple tree for syrup.   Or per­haps a min­ing metaphor is bet­ter, because when you dig into a hole, you never know what you’re going to dig up.  Might just be dirt and rock.  Might be a dis­gust­ing worm or cen­tipede.  Or you might find a gem. 

Three: I write to enter­tain myself and oth­ers.  I find the act of read­ing pleasurable—I imag­ine any­one read­ing this blog does, and it goes with­out say­ing. However, I know a lot of peo­ple who don’t enjoy read­ing, and they don’t do much of it.  They read maybe a book or two a year.  I write sto­ries hop­ing that I can pro­vide a plea­sur­able diver­sion from life for a short period of time. Entertainment is such a bland word for what we do, but there it is.

Four: I write because I can­not paint, or draw, or play music.  I write because I’m deeply com­pelled to cre­ate things, and writ­ing is what I can do.  I’m not a mas­ter of words, but I have at least some com­pe­tence.  I think to some degree we take the path of less resis­tance when it comes to cre­ativ­ity.  I branch out reg­u­larly to other cre­ative fields, but I always return to the writ­ten word, because for me, it’s what comes most naturally. 

Relating these rea­sons back to what fic­tion is, I see that some of them are irrel­e­vant to craft, and some of them are.  The sec­ond rea­son is per­haps the most con­nected.  Knowing now that what I am attempt­ing to do is cre­ate false mem­ory puts writ­ing into a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive for me.  The words I choose will be dif­fer­ent now.  The way I struc­ture them will be as well.   When you’re writ­ing to cre­ate a last­ing mem­ory, you have to work dif­fer­ently than if you’re writ­ing sim­ply to entertain. 

I can feel some half-​​formed thoughts devel­op­ing in the rear of my mind regard­ing how one delib­er­ately cre­ates the effect of false mem­ory, and I’ll share them when they’re more fully cooked.  This is a les­son that is still in progress, as most of them are.

What do you think?  Why do you write, and how does it relate to what fic­tion is, using either Delany’s def­i­n­i­tion or one of your own?