My Poetry

January 1, 2014

"Human Fiction"

Every creative work has a part of its maker in it -- it's nearly impossible to make something with complete unbiasedness. Every person has a perspective through which he will communicate with the world. Unnecessary categories and labels only serve to discourage a view of the unity of the human condition. (See, right there I asserted an assumed principle that the human condition exists -- a theory I believe and with which some people disagree severely. But everybody will, I hope, at least admit that we are all together homo sapiens trying to make some pretty things here.) 
Imagine if you walked into a bookstore and there were  millions of little sections "Atheist Fiction","Buddist Fiction", "Humanitarian Fiction", "Racist Fiction", "Relativist Fiction", "Materialist Fiction"...whatever. But that is not the case. If one walks into Barnes and Nobles now, what will be seen is a "Fiction" section and "Christian Fiction" one, and the latter is assumed to be poorly written -- the plot and characters are merely a stage to shout bible passages from. This assumption -- unfortunately -- is often correct. 
Literature expresses the views, thoughts, and stories of people. And people are innately unique. So uniform characters who all think the same societally accepted thoughts is absolutely ridiculous. Good writing is a hard earned craft which ought to be appreciated and evaluated as just that. Not on the belief system of author or characters. 
There is a mindset amongst some Christian writers that any book they write has to go through a Christian publisher to get to the mainstream of this sub-culture. And for main stream of this subculture is all to which they aspire. They lose sight of the over arching goal of writing with the most skill and craft as possible in this self expression.
For some writers -- like myself -- there is a fear of writing a Catholic of Christian character for fear of being shoved off to the the ever-dreaded "Christian Fiction" shelf. In my writing I hope to accurately and fully explain the life and pains of a person through my character. A person's believe in spiritual beings, life after death, and the like greatly shape this person's life and so, to fully write the way a character views the world, certain greatly polarizing opinions must be expressed. Does my character think there is hope after death? Or that there is no God? What does he think is a good thing?
I think it is a huge mistake to start classifying fiction. If classification is so greatly craved, why not "Human Fiction"? At the end of the day, we are all humans trying to fight through this life thing. Literature shows on a page that through an array of colors, creeds and opinions, the same basic traits shine through: love, joy, hope, humanity! And this is far too beautiful of a thing to sacrifice to classifications and labelings. 

No comments:

Post a Comment