Fiction should be important

Monday 3/11/24

I'm not going to pretend a person is a thing they're not unless it's a child playing a game. And that includes everything. Whatever labels, identifiers, and terms they affix to themselves, when they're a bad person and want to be viewed as a good one, when they're poor at writing and wish you to say otherwise. I answer to reality. That's what matters. Doesn't mean I'll say something. But it means I won't say lies and sing along.

Never do I read any fiction right now and think, "This is important." Instead what I think is, "This does not matter at all."

Fiction should be important. I don't mean that it always impacts the world, though the best fiction should have that capability. Fiction can be important within the context of itself. That story that's happening can be important to the people in it.

I never see any fiction now that matters to the world, or to the characters in the story. None of it needs to be done. None of it. And if it doesn't need to be done, for some legitimate reason or other that has to do with the story, then there's no need for it to exist. It could just as easily not exist and nothing would change. No matter how many people happened to see it.

I've only worked on one thing today (though I did write an Easter op-ed in my head), but it's a story as culturally significant and necessary as "Fitty." And it's very close to being done. This would be a different America if Americans were to read this story. You cannot lump me in with any other writer or say "That's literary fiction and people don't go for that blah blah" or any other goddamn label. No one has ever done the likes of this. I don't want to hear, "But people don't read and blah blah blah blah and blah blah blah and blah blah blah." They don't read any of that shit. All of the shit of this system. Because there's no reason to. This isn't even reading. This is something else. Whole different other fucking thing. Time to make up new terms. Story is called "Friendship Bracelet."