Here's some food for thought in case you are thinking. I don't recommend thinking, at least not in this heat, but maybe when the storms arrive, you can have a brainstorm. We can discuss this sort of thing at the book event.
What does a fiction writer do?
* provide a vivid, continuous dream about a vicarious experience
* present characters and/or situations readers can empathize with, giving them a broader base of "experience" than their own single life can provide
* allow readers to project onto their inner viewscreen a movie that they co-create with the author as dreamer, meaning that readers of books will have different experiences of the books more often than viewers of video will
* tell lies
* tell lies that people willingly suspend their disbelief for in order to learn or gain some insight from the story
Orson Scott Card writes in Characters and Viewpoint that the highest purpose of fiction is to teach readers something profound about people (paraphrase). Storytelling is archetypal, and it is a universal human occupation/obsession to hear and rehear or tell and retell stories.
Michelangelo said, "I know the creator will go, but his work survives. That is why to escape death, I attempt to bind my soul to my work."
Why *I* write? To entertain and inform, naturally. Because I hear the Muses singing, and I'm fascinated by what they send me to create with. But also for a selfish reason. So that someday after I've crossed the veil into the next world, perhaps someone will find and read one of my books, essays, or stories, and I will live again. I will be remembered unto another generation. My work is a tour of my mind. It's a way of doing a neener-neener to death, which eventually makes each of us disappear into the next world and be forgotten by this one . . . except for artists and writers. Look at those ancient Greeks who are still applauded and loved by many today who read their plays and other works.
"I don't want to live forever through my work. I want to live forever by not dying."--Woody Allen
Discuss.
