Creating Fiction

I am currently working on two projects. One a thriller novel regarding an individual and genocide right out of contemporary events and the other a visual arts project about "middle" or "average" America. When I take on projects I do a lot of reading so that I am informed and also to study to create the best possible art that I can.

For the novel I have been reading a very good book, "The Lie That Tells A Truth" by John Dufresne. I have found this book really helpful although I have to admit that "writer's block" does not seem to be inflicted on me like it is with other authors. I have been encouraged to write because friends have always said that I can create these great story subjects with good characters that I should get them published. Well when I took up the dare it was not hard to complete stories as I usually like to research and create believable stories from a world of facts that is then given real characters with a specific plot.

What alarmed me with this book was that the author attacked the writer Ayn Rand as a poor writer because the writing has a political motivation. While Ayn Rand's writing can be difficult to read and is dated I would have to say that Rand's been more read than Dufresne and is not any more polemic than Doesteyevsky who Dufresne quotes at least several times. I understand that Rand is hard to read from when I was assigned The Fountainhead in high school and I tried to read Atlas Shrugged during college.

Besides this shortcoming I find Dufresne has plenty of good advice to writers.

The book I read for my visual art project is "The Big Sort; The Clustering of America and Why it is Tearing Us Apart" by Bill Bishop. This book should be read to understand politics in America and the problems that we have in America. We have fragmented ourselves and then been targeted by consumerism in all parts of our lives that we do not want to realize that their may be a different America outside of our neighborhood. America today believes in diversity as long as the others do not disturb me and my neighbors who will decide who is in our neighborhood. These same Americans do not understand that they actually buy into the consumed America per the targeting of corporations, churches and political parties instead of their own original independent ideas.

I guess in both projects I am trying to show created worlds in hopes of creating a better world so I guess that I am like Ayn Rand and Doesteyevsky (and probably Mr. Dufresne) in that concern.

Remember if you see me writing in my notebook I may be putting you in a novel so wave and check your local bookstore in a year or so, although I will use the "characters and events in this work are fictional" disclaimer.