Life can be (a) dream
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December 2, 2025 - Motive to create
I think I want to write fiction, but most of my writing is definitely not fiction. I seem to enjoy more technical things, like motives of rape and even work documentation, as disgusting as it is. I guess it doesn't always have to be technical. Also, book commentary and personal notes are surprisingly fun to write. I liked writing mini reviews for Confession, The Bell Jar, and Neurosis and Human Growth quite a bit. I obviously enjoy journaling, too, or else I wouldn't have journaled over forty thousand words in a year.
I know I can do good enough write ups. I like doing those sorts of works because it feels like a net benefit to other people. I don't bother writing something if I can find anything similar, so anything like this automatically feels like a benefit to others. I was happy to write the rape article because I knew that nothing like it existed. Everything on the subject was trapped within hundreds of pages of work that I knew that no one would read because it was targeted towards other psychologists, or it was so far reduced that it was insulting to the average person and robbed them of basic information. This is also exactly why I am so motivated to finish up a post on the Necessary historical context to read Demons. I tried to find something like it, and I just couldn't! The footnotes don't give enough information, and the Reddit posts are insanely reductive!
So, at the very least, I know why I enjoy writing informative works. I just have a few issues applying these same reasons directly onto fiction. Currently, the main reason is insecurity. Anything about fiction is outside of my expertise. I do not know how to write it, and I am scared to learn it. If I don't know how to write it, then I have nothing new to add. Someone else can write it better, so I shouldn't even bother trying to write fiction in the first place. Obviously, I can get past this with enough practice, so I am not too worried about this reason even though it eats so much of my headspace right now.
What really concerns me is the second reason: I have things to say, but I don't want to say it in a way that makes me become a moral arbiter of sorts. I want to say basic things like "maybe social media is bad", or "I think that we struggle to understand when we're hurting ourselves, but it's easier to understand when others hurt themselves, and I think we can exploit this", or even "insecurity makes us unable to love with all of our hearts". However, I feel as if I am placing myself into a position of power and moral absoluteness when I try to say things like this whether it's written into fiction or explicitly said. I still think I'm right, mind you, or else I wouldn't be trying to figure out my problem with writing at all. It's a strange position to be in. I think I'm right, but I don't want to say it. This is probably why I had a mild slimey feeling when I tried to write Love is never dead. I believe every word I said in it, but the more I wrote, the more convinced I was that I came to the false conclusion that I had the right to tell others how to love. This is what led to me becoming so defensive and protective at the end of it.
Does that mean I'm insecure in general, or does that mean I'm insecure about my beliefs because I already see their flaws? I apply my strong judgement of others' beliefs straight onto myself. I am unbearably angry when I see an author's bad ideas presented as the truth, and get mad that they wrote this in the first place. But when Dostoevsky uses Zosima as a mouthpiece in The Brothers Karamazov, I am okay with it and even happy to read it. How can I tell that an idea is refined enough to be shared? When is a belief of mine ready to be shared to others? Incorrect beliefs are damaging! What gives me the right to do this?
At least I understand that my motive for wanting to write fiction is the same reason I want to make anything else: I want to make something informative and useful that other people might benefit from, and I think fiction might be more effective than what I do currently.
