Why I Like Fiction (or embellished reality -- whatever you want to call it)

I had to write a little blurb about why I like fiction for my short story class. I thought of it as busy work initially (common theme with me and school work/school) anyway, I found it pretty rewarding and cool to think about it, and eventually write about. Here are my thoughts about fiction, with a page limit of 2.

Why I Like Fiction:

            I think I like fiction because it takes bravery, sometimes conviction, and when done well it detaches myself and most readers from the coffee shop, their apartment, or place from where they are reading it. Just like a movie, a memorable song, or piece of art it encompasses a world, homogenizes it into a certain space and displays itself for you. However, unlike all those other things, all a piece of words have is, its words. All it has is the writer’s intentions, feelings, and emotions, which can be seen as a lot or not. It places a great part of responsibility on the reader to comprehend the meanings, and pros and take them in and digest them. Its almost as if it’s a transaction of trust between two people, the writer and the reader. The writer to create something from nothing, and the everlasting struggle with the blank page, and the reader finding time in their day to properly attack a collection of thoughts, and ultimately a story of some kind.

            For me, myself, I have a tendency to read authors that I am jealous of. Writers that either did it, or are doing it. I only read male writers, mostly because I find that I can align my thinking easier with their thinking. I myself am a writer and aspiring novelist and maybe screenwriter, so for the writers that I choose to read I have a predisposition to use their styles and tendencies when I write my pros and poems. I have a short list, and concise list of writers that I am always going back to when I have the time, fortunately the specific list has a great number of quality works that I can continually delve into for years to come. Those writers are: Hunter S. Thompson, Charles Bukowski, Ralph Ellison, Cormac McCarthy, the Coen Brothers (scripts), Slug (song lyrics/poetry), Wes Anderson (scripts), Jack Kerouac, Spike Jonze (scripts), and James Baldwin.

            What I like specifically about these writers is that they wrote or are writing about or from some form of reality, and for the most part they write in first person. They were/are writers that completely lived it for every moment that life provides, they didn’t leave or didn’t seem to leave anything hanging in the distance between the mind and the page, it was all there for better or for worse, for the publisher or whom it may have offended, they didn’t care because they were their God when using their words. I myself write mostly about things that I experienced or thought I experienced with maybe some embellishment when needed. I enjoy things that I can relate to, or things that I can see my readers or other readers being able to grasp and hold onto. Things from this world, our world, in this reality or some other reality of someone else. Ideas, stories, and things that can make people cry, laugh, and then jump up and down, all within a few pages: chaos to drive the story forward.

            My favorite titles that I have been able to read from those writers are: Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas (HST), Hells Angels (HST), WOMEN (BUK), Post Office (BUK), PULP (BUK), Invisible Man (RE), The Road (CM), Blood Meridian (CM), On The Road (JK), Sonny’s Blues (JB) Darjeeling Limited (WA), Bottle Rocket (WA), Molly Cool (SLUG), Scapegoat (SLUG), Guns & Cigarettes (SLUG), Her (SJ), The Big Lebowski (Coen Bros).