In a recent profile on Rebecca Solnit, she came to the defense of non-fiction writing:
“…it was always annoying to me as a young writer that people assume that the ultimate goal is to write fiction, that somehow you’re climbing the ladder and the top rung is fiction. I have a little grudge because fiction was always treated as the most important, the most literary, the aspirational goal… F*** that”.
Not that non-fiction is necessarily under attack, but it is the case that fiction is treated as a higher art form. It can feel, at times, as though one isn’t necessarily considered an artist if they work exclusively or primarily in non-fiction, unless they also harbor an interest in writing fiction (or writing non-fiction as if they are writing fiction). Does it matter? In the way these things do: it is not some grave injustice, but it’s the kind of slight that does make you want to tell a few people “fuck that.”
So it is that I’m often asked if I would ever write fiction. The short answer: probably not. The slightly longer, but still short answer: I’ve tried a few times, it’s not my thing. It’s not the way my brain works, or not the way my brain works best. Sometimes I’ll have ideas, but the fall flat in the idea stage. I don’t have the patience (or maybe it’s the creativity?) for building it out beyond the initial “well, what if…”
Mostly. Again, I’ve given it a few tries. I have a short story sitting in my Google Drive that I actually submitted a couple places about four years ago. It didn’t get much attention. The kind people at Electric Literature turned me down but said some nice things while doing so.
But… it’s bad. I know it’s bad. I have good enough taste to know what is and is not bad, and my short story is bad. It is missing all the things that make good fiction good. My brain does not do this work well.
I present this to you know it is bad and not caring so much that it is. It’s between us—I have no intention of every submitting it anywhere else now. I don’t have any intention of writing any more fiction in the near future. I don’t foreclose the possibility, if I can ever figure something out that moves me, but I’m more than content to work in non-fiction.
Anyway, here it is: